Items for category: Blog

Today is Sunday 23 January 2016, which means that my two-month treatment programme is finished. Following initial surgery I had two bouts of chemotherapy on the first week and the fourth week (Monday 28 December official Boxing Day) and radiotherapy every week day and occasional Saturdays and Sundays …

The vaccination of boys as well as girls against human papillomavirus (HPV) in order to prevent a wide range of diseases in both sexes has become one of the most widely supported public health interventions not to have been implemented in the UK.
This topic is …

It is not meant to be a competition, but if one is trying to consider the most demoralised, stressed and vulnerable workforce in medicine, general practice has to be a clear winner.
The profession is in a state of chaos and collapse and has been demolished …

This week the Independent newspaper reported that urology was the number one most stressed occupation. This initially seemed surprising to me and many other urological colleagues and surgeons of other specialties. Surely those who practise trauma surgery and vascular or transplantation must be more stressed than …

Recently there has been an alarming increase in the number of doctors and other healthcare workers being prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter (GNM), with a great deal of personal disruption and devastation as a result. Almost all of the mistakes that resulted in these criminal …

It would be an interesting exercise for each of us to add up the number of occasions on which we have heard the phrase ‘things were better in the past’ or one of its variations. As a follow-up, we could then analyse whether it was …

John Wickham can rightly be claimed to be the godfather of endourology and the impact of his work on minimally invasive surgery across specialties is still evident today. Yet, during his career, he faced criticism from his colleagues who didn’t share his vision and belief …

Urothelial bladder cancer (UBC) is a disease that predominates in the elderly, with a median age at presentation of over 73 years (1). Incidence rates in the UK more than double for patients over 80 years of age compared to those patients under 70 (2, …

If you are an ‘All Black’ from New Zealand you will be content and happy.
Rugby supporters from all the other participating countries will have painful memories of what could have been, and some, especially the English, will be left with the reality of what did …

Last week junior doctors in England voted on possible strike action over their hours of work and their pay. As I write this blog the result is unknown, but from the junior doctors I have spoken to, it seems probable that there will be a …