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Mashup Score: 3
A collaborative dialogue between clinician and patient can make a huge difference to patient experience, writes Stephanie O’Donohue It is vital that patients feel safe and supported when accessing gynaecology services. There are many excellent healthcare professionals driving forward improvements in gynaecology care, but we know that traumatic experiences continue to occur.12 Patient accounts relating to procedures such as intrauterine device insertions or hysteroscopies are evidence of this. We have heard patients describe unbearably high levels of pain, exacerbated by the absence of any forewarning from medical professionals. Many have felt their pain was dismissed or ignored and that they were sent on their way without due concern, compassion, or follow-up. These negative experiences can have a damaging, long lasting effect on the relation between patients and the healthcare system and can leave patients feeling fearful of attending other important health appointments. Being invited
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet
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Mashup Score: 1
Four years on from the founding of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, Habib Naqvi looks back on the progress made and warns us not to be complacent Five years ago, The BMJ led a national conversation in its Racism in Medicine issue.1 It shone a much needed light on the deeply entrenched biases in our healthcare services and the structural inequities that drive them. In the wake of that conversation, we founded the NHS Race and Health Observatory, an organisation with the mission of identifying racial inequity in healthcare and pressing the NHS and the government to meaningfully tackle it. This means looking not just at the harms of racism in healthcare, but also to the inequities that have persisted for centuries. The fight against racism is often a fight against the status quo, and we need unified anti-racist action to overcome it. In 2020, black, Asian, and ethnic minority people were dying disproportionately from covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement spurred a global conver
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
Four years on from the founding of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, @DrHNaqvi looks back on the progress made and warns us not to be complacent in tackling #racism. @NHS_RHO https://t.co/LbWnQHyq8q
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Mashup Score: 5
Stark inequalities exist in the number and distribution of ethnic minority doctors in specialty roles, writes Sethina Watson In my region, including me, I know of only three black anaesthetists who have trained in the past 10 years. In England and Wales, only 22 of 2649 (0.8%) resident anaesthetists are black—down 40% from 2014.1 We are seeing the same trend in other specialties too, resulting in fewer ethnic minority doctors on the specialist register.1 We are doing our patients a disservice by not ensuring the workforce represents the population it serves. Recent data from the General Medical Council show that for the first time there are more ethnic minority doctors than white doctors in our workforce.2 Diversity is one of the NHS’s greatest assets, with international medical graduates and ethnic minority doctors contributing a great deal. But scratching this veneer of apparent diversity reveals huge inequalities in the specialties and roles in which …
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
"In my region, including me, I know of only three black anaesthetists who have trained in the past 10 years." Huge inequalities exist in the number and distribution of ethnic minority doctors in specialty roles, writes @morefluids https://t.co/IIR50jHKDY
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Mashup Score: 1Partha Kar: NHS leaders must be honest about failures to confront racism in the workforce - 7 day(s) ago
It’s remarkable how the narrative on tackling racism in the medical workforce has changed in recent years. In 2019-20 there seemed to be a genuine appetite to tackle the scourge of racism in the NHS workforce, with a new director for people and communities at NHS England1 and a specific lead for the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES). Datasets were made publicly available, and strategies were created to investigate why this protected characteristic always shows the worst outcomes in annual staff surveys.2 In 2020 The BMJ published a special issue focused on the culture of racism in the NHS workforce—but there’s been little, if any, progress.3 Five years on, there’s a feeling that racism is being dismissed. Race equality week came and went recently without a word from NHS leaders. Relevant social media accounts were mostly confined to reposting about problems related to policy, while disregarding the actual issue …
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
"Most staff would probably respect a level of honesty more than a weak approach." NHS leaders must be honest about failures to confront #racism in the workforce, says @parthaskar https://t.co/gnSnFFAz1J
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Mashup Score: 4Racism in medical schools: are things improving? - 7 day(s) ago
Five years ago a BMJ investigation found that medical students were being let down by poor monitoring and responses to complaints of racism. Gareth Iacobucci repeated the exercise to see whether any progress has been made When The BMJ asked UK medical schools in 2020 whether they recorded students’ complaints about racism and racial harassment, half of the schools said they did and that between them they’d counted 11 such complaints in 10 years.1 Students from ethnic minority groups told The BMJ the depressingly familiar reason for such a low figure. “What’s the point of reporting?” was their conclusion, as nothing is done about it. Five years on, the landscape is very different. A global pandemic highlighted the possible links between discriminatory practices in the NHS and the higher proportion of deaths among ethnic minority doctors, nurses, and patients than among white staff and service users.23 A BMA charter, launched with the 2020 investigation and now widely adopted, aims to he
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
#BMJExclusive Five years ago a BMJ investigation found that medical students were being let down by poor monitoring and responses to complaints of racism. Has any progress been made? @Garethiacobucci investigates https://t.co/wda9qgpndu
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Mashup Score: 3If we want to invest in our future NHS workforce, then studying medicine should be affordable - 8 day(s) ago
Students should not feel they have to abandon their medical career because of a lack of financial support while at medical school The BMA recently published survey data that found 43% of UK medical students out of 3500 surveyed have considered taking a break or leaving their course entirely because of financial difficulties.1 As a graduate entry medical student who has taken time out of my course due to financial pressures, I think it is clearer than ever that increased financial investment is necessary to support the future of our NHS workforce. With the rising cost of living, both student finance and the NHS bursary are proving to be insufficient to meet students’ everyday expenses, but the latter is particularly meagre. In the second year of medical school, graduate entry students transition from being funded by Student Finance England to an NHS bursary. For students on standard entry medical courses, this switch happens in their fifth year of study. This change was introduced so th
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
"Medical students should not be faced with having to make decisions about whether to disrupt their course, or abandon their medical career entirely, because they cannot afford to live while at university." @BMJStudent https://t.co/emWhYB21L7
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Mashup Score: 7
Rules and protocols are helpful in medicine. I’ve argued for streamlined standardised pathways,1 and I also value the doctor’s unique role in knowing when to deviate from a protocol with an individual patient. But this is challenging when no single entity is in charge and there’s a groundswell of opinion about the need to change a particular rule. For many decades, one tenet of anaesthesia has been that the stomach must be empty before surgery to reduce the risk of aspiration (stomach contents entering the lungs).2 There are a few exceptions for extremely urgent operations. The typical nil-by-mouth schedule has been no food for six hours before surgery and only “free, clear fluids” until two hours before it, then nothing in the final two hours. In reality it can be hard to predict …
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
Several organisations have started to allow patients to sip clear fluids until being sent for by the operating team. Nil-by-mouth rules need updating to implement SipTilSend, writes @scarlettmcnally https://t.co/7dl1iROhcq
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Mashup Score: 1
How much will our working lives as GPs be changed by artificial intelligence (AI)—and should we be worried about losing our jobs? Patients will continue to need empathy, physical examination, and human connection, so we’re likely to be employed for a while yet. However, AI is already here in the back offices of many practices, supporting document management and triage systems, and increasingly in the consulting room too. Some GPs are using “ambient scribing” AI systems that “listen” to the consultation and produce a written record of what they consider to be the medically relevant features. These, according to the sales pitches, free …
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
How much will our working lives as GPs be changed by artificial intelligence—and should we be worried about losing our jobs? Helen Salisbury discusses the role of #AI in general practice https://t.co/BJC0ULncGI
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Mashup Score: 4Dismantle structural barriers to improve reproductive healthcare for racially minoritised women - 8 day(s) ago
Reproductive justice requires an intersectional approach, says Danielle Solomon Over the past decade inequities in reproductive outcomes among racially minoritised women have increasingly become a part of public health discourse. This is largely because of widespread advocacy efforts led by organisations such as Five x More1 and the Reproductive Justice Initiative.2 It is an area that was the subject of a feature in the 2020 BMJ Racism in Medicine series,3 and it is just as relevant in this series, five years later. If we are to tackle these inequities, it is crucial that decision makers understand the complex, structural drivers of reproductive health inequality. One of the key statistics—often at the forefront of this discourse—is the disparity in maternal mortality between black and white women. In the UK, women of black ethnicity are twice as likely to die during pregnancy and the neonatal period as white women, and the maternal mortality risk among Asian women is also higher than
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
It is crucial that decision makers understand the complex, structural drivers of reproductive health inequality. Dismantle structural barriers to improve reproductive healthcare for racially minoritised women, says Danielle Solomon https://t.co/Ipn3mUNBxw
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Mashup Score: 4
Black women are more than twice as likely as white women to die from pregnancy related causes (doi:10.1136/bmj.r226).1 This inequality isn’t fully explained by socioeconomic factors. The explanation is racism. Even among ethnic minorities, black people generally experience the worst health outcomes. Racism also explains the barriers that black and Asian staff encounter in their careers and the disproportionate abuse they experience. In a medical profession with around 40% representation from ethnic minorities, only 3% of UK trained “junior doctors” were black, said a 2021 report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.2 In specialties such as anaesthesia, black doctors find it the hardest to progress to senior medical roles (doi:10.1136/bmj.r293).3 Five years ago a theme edition of The BMJ catalysed the conversation on racial discrimination in medicine, setting out a clear challenge to health systems. We didn’t start the conversation, and we certainly didn’t end it, but we brought fresh im
Source: www.bmj.comCategories: General Medicine News, General HCPsTweet-
"Our collective failure to tackle racism in medicine remains a scandal. Where is the justice, when the injustice stares us in the face?" @KamranAbbasi in the latest Editor's Choice https://t.co/ylGO9SnXS8
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"We have heard patients describe unbearably high levels of pain, exacerbated by the absence of any forewarning from medical professionals." Empowering patients is key to improving gynaecology experiences, writes @odonohue_steph https://t.co/5DrCy9nB2z