Should Military Doctors Help Patients When Doing So Could Increase Risks to Others?

Strategies to help patients understand risks.

Effective risk communication is the basis for informed patient consent for medical treatment, yet until recently doctors have lagged behind other professionals in learning this skill. In other industries where risks have to be conveyed to the public (such as chemical, nuclear, water, and food industries) usually only a few people carry out this task on behalf of their organisations and they are...

Do Financial Incentives Increase Doctors’ Willingness to Publish Research? – A Pilot Study of 21 Junior Doctors

How Can Doctors Help Their Patients to Return to Work?

F or most patients, work remains an important part of life. However, patients with chronic diseases often encounter diffi culties upon returning to work after an episode of illness [1]. Helping to reintegrate patients into their workplace should, therefore, be an important treatment goal for every doctor. However, in a recent review of back pain treatment, we found that patients were dissatisfi...

‘When Right could be so Wrong’. Laterality Errors in Healthcare

Distinguishing right from left can be challenging. During basic clinical training, we grappled with distinguishing superior from inferior, proximal from distal, medial from lateral but did you ever consider that some individuals may have had difficulty in telling right from left? We make right / left (RL) decisions on an everyday basis. Whether providing someone with travel directions or taking...

Identity cards help patients identify their doctors

Patients admitted to hospital are immediately overloaded with information from staff in A&E, to subsequent acute medical and inpatient wards. Essential details are conveyed to patients at each step, including diagnosis, management and identification of various team members involved in their care. An initial audit within our South London hospital revealed only one third of patients admitted onto...