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Twenty years ago, the NHS introduced an 'associate' role to assist doctors and cut costs. Now, a revolt over patient safety and declining expertise is tearing the medical establishment apart [...]

When Dr Dan Poulter entered parliament in 2010, the NHS was recording the highest public approval ratings in its history. Fully 75 per cent of respondents in the British Social [...]

Our medical editor spent New Year's Day in A&E after his mother collapsed in church. In this powerful personal essay he describes a public health service in chaos and offers [...]

The Care Quality Commission's (CQC) report into the case of Valdo Calocane, the paranoid schizophrenic who killed three and seriously injured three others in Nottingham in June last year, looks [...]

This was the fourth time Gareth had suffered from stomach ache over the past six months. 'I've put it down to constipation before,' he said. There was a lull, during [...]

Political parties frequently have bold, fully worked up plans not trailed in their manifestos. Keeping radical proposals under wraps minimises opponents' potential targets for scaremongering. And if elected, subsequent surprise [...]

In his illuminating piece about Conrad Noel, Ken Worpole says FD Maurice is 'largely forgotten' (Critics, 29 November). Not by the students and staff of the Working Men's College in [...]

Penny, 18 months old, was hot, her temperature had been running above 39[degrees]C for two days. She was also bothered: off her food, no longer interested in playing, bursting into [...]

I diagnosed a case of whooping cough the other week. Actually, I've diagnosed a couple of dozen over the course of this winter's epidemic. In adults and children the pertussis [...]

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) plays a vital role in knee joint stability. Sudden pivoting movements accompanied by abrupt deceleration can cause it to tear or rupture. This is a [...]

Avril was wondering about an assessment for autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). 'I've always been very sensitive to noise. And I have to stick to routines--I really don't cope well with [...]

Were a jumbo jet to come down in central England, killing all 536 people on board, wall-to-wall media coverage would ensue, together with an air accident investigation into what had [...]

The cherished relationship between NHS GPs and their patients is under sustained assault. Can continuity of care be saved in this era of grinding austerities? Red and swollen from mid-shin [...]

Although distinctly unhappy, one-year-old Aidan turned out to have nothing more serious than a bad bout of hand, foot and mouth disease. I explained the diagnosis to his father, Alex, [...]

The boy was four years old, with a high fever, cough and sore eyes. It was his skin that alerted me--densely distributed, starkly florid spots, quite different from the usual [...]

There was a message next to the appointment: 'Phone mum. No better with medication.' I opened Jody's notes, expecting to see a colleague's entry. But the only recent addition to [...]

There is an unmistakable quality to someone's speech when they are in severe pain. Keeley had it. Something about her phrasing, short and snatched, the air sounding pent-up in her [...]

Manda was disappointed. 'It's been months since the surgery, and I've only lost one and a half kilos.' 'Two secs, sorry.' I turned back to the computer and rechecked her [...]

After the NHS celebrated its 75th anniversary last year, 2024 will see another important landmark: the 25th birthday of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). Despite being [...]

The curtain swept aside and he entered the cubicle. He was well over six feet tall, white-coated, with a notes folder in hand. He took a single glance at Mum--her [...]

The NHS was opposed by doctors from the start and has suffered decades of ministerial harm. Can Labour fix it? It is hard to know whether we are celebrating a [...]

An extraordinary general meeting of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) held on 17 October looks like the start of a revolution in UK medicine. Or, more precisely, a counter-revolution. [...]

We were debriefing after morning surgery. Sam, my registrar, clicked open the next set of notes. 'OK, so this was a 65-year-old guy, went into AF on holiday. The hospital [...]

Imagine you are a front seat passenger. The driver has promised to get you to your destination by a specified time. He has a certain raffish charm, an abiding tendency [...]

A typical doctor makes 10,000 decisions a year. But even the best will get things wrong at least 100 times. Can AI offer a solution to human error in medicine? [...]

We must not allow death on this scale to be neutralised or normalised I have lost count of the number of people I have seen die over the past 30 [...]

In July, scientific advisers warned of the potential for a significant Covid-19 variant to occur in the winter. But instead of preparing for the worst, the government created the ideal [...]

After the last wave in March and April, there has been a sustained period of extremely low Covid infection rates in the UK over the summer--so much so that it [...]

Immunisation against infections has become, for most of us, a routine part of life. The general principle is familiar. Expose the body to harmless fragments (antigens) from disease-causing viruses or [...]

Following the recent outbreak of serious hepatitis of unknown cause in children and the emergence of monkeypox, the UK Health Security Agency has issued an alert about another unusual infectious [...]

The rumbles, when they first reached me, seemed distant. Reports of GP surgeries closing in far-flung places--Folkestone, Swindon, north Wales, Tyneside. The downward spiral was similar wherever the stories originated. [...]

The author was a young boy when he was told his father had cancer, a disease that killed his paternal grandparents. Now, he draws on his long experience as a [...]

Viewed from the perspective of the NHS, the Covid pandemic has had three phases, roughly divided along annual lines. In Year One, 2020, we were confronted by a new pathogen, [...]

Bob Ferguson (Correspondence, 24 April) raises an important issue, which is that decisions over resuscitation status and how aggressively to pursue active versus palliative treatment should always be made on [...]

Charlie was a definite Covid-19 case. He hadn't had a test: his illness developed ten days before community testing became available in our area. But his pattern of symptoms was [...]

The Chinese word for 'crisis' is often thought to comprise two characters signifying 'danger' and 'opportunity'. General practice is certainly in crisis. This has been building throughout the austerity decade, [...]

In recent years, several concepts have become widely accepted as markers of a healthier lifestyle. The goal of five portions of fruit and veg a day helps shape dietary norms. [...]

At time of writing, an outbreak of acute hepatitis of unknown origin in children has reached 228 cases across 20 countries globally. The UK has by far the greatest incidence, [...]

Nine-year-old Danielle had Covid in January and, ever since, she'd been experiencing bouts of sharp chest pains and a racing heart. Her dad sounded sensible and pragmatic. They hadn't been [...]

In March, Sapien Labs published the second annual 'Mental State of the World' report. Its survey of 223,000 adults from selected countries confirms what many intuitively feel: the UK is [...]

Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are statutory bodies established under Andrew Lansley's 2012 Health and Social Care Act. There are around 200 of them in England (the devolved nations have different [...]

The room was packed by the time I arrived. I took a seat and got my sandwich out. Lunch on the hoof is an invariable part of general practice life, [...]

Practising in a semi-rural location in the south-west of England I have few jet-setting patients, but Nell is one exception. With a background in geology and metallurgy, she spends extended [...]

Anya, a GP at a neighbouring practice, called, wondering if I'd complete a Part 2. This is a statutory procedure before a body can be cremated. The deceased patient's regular [...]

Medicine has got itself into a tangle over vitamin D. Research studies have found associations between low levels of vitamin D and around 130 different health problems, including heart disease, [...]

He couldn't help himself. He couldn't talk about anything else. He was repelling everyone around him. Samuel's mother had not been our patient. I listened carefully as he recounted the [...]

Our practice recently received a letter from Professor Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England. She was writing to let us to know that we rank in the [...]

First expected in the autumn, then Brexit-delayed until at least December, there was something fitting about Theresa May finally unveiling her NHS Ten-Year Plan on 7 January. The New Year [...]

Successive attempts by Labour and the Tories to 'modernise' the NHS have created untold problems. And the public-service ethos has been squandered It is an awkward fact for many on [...]

With Ukraine dominating the news, a proposed overhaul of English general practice, published by the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange on 4 March, received little media attention. This is a [...]