Druin Burch is a consultant physician, a former junior doctor, and the author of books on history and medicine.
One in seven British adults – almost nine million people – now take antidepressants. Yet a study attached to the University of California San Francisco suggests we don’t actually know if they should. The paper from the US, led by William Ward and published last month, exposes a glaring flaw: American trials test these drugs
Experts warn that doctors like me risk a condition known as ‘compassion fatigue’ – an emotional numbness that comes from too much caring for too long. But aren’t we all on the edge? Distant hardships are now visible as they happen, and the sense that victims are everywhere becomes vividly real. Newsreaders, documentary makers, editorialists,
Why should anyone care about Sydney Smith, who died on this day in 1845? 180 years have diminished the stature of his worldly achievements. He was an Anglican cleric who campaigned for an end to slavery, against the oppression of Catholics, for moral reform in the church and democratic reform in parliament. His political arguments
The NHS is swallowing more money than ever, yet delivering worse results. Now its failings are not only hurting patients, but also weighing down the economy. Employment in healthcare, said the Bank of England in last week’s Monetary Policy Report, has surged since 2019, while productivity has dropped. The Bank downgraded its 2025 growth forecast
This Valentine’s Day, as the nation does its duty and celebrates by dining out, often in stilted discomfort, it occurs to me that many of my finest restaurant experiences have been in singular company. No offence is meant to my wife, whose conversation has remained fascinating to me over the 21 years of our relationship.
Doctor Who, which started back in 1963, is often spoken about with a curious reverence as though it were something other than trash TV of varying quality. Unhealthy infatuation is not confined to the show’s viewers, as is obvious from the BBC’s recent announcement about the show’s new writers. Pulp television can be joyful, unless
Difficult, I know, to spend your life dreaming of having gone to Oxford. This year’s offers have just been announced and Cambridge’s are imminent. I feel for those who miss out, but I have some words of comfort. My late mother told me I announced my desire to study at Oxford aged seven, visiting the
Not a winter goes past without hospitals overflowing; the situation is so predictable it deserves a better word than ‘crisis’. Yet for patients and staff the sense of crisis is real, and connoisseurs of this annual event say that this year’s is especially dire. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has spoken of his distress and shame, saying
New Year’s resolutions are famously frail, so pick one that’s achievable. Half of the year’s cookbooks are sold in December: this January, let one shine in use, not simply rust unburnished. As an inveterate buyer of well-chosen recipe books, and a victim of gifting that I’m ungrateful enough to call less discriminate, I have never
Most people shudder at the thought of working on Christmas Day. Not me. I’ve worked as a hospital doctor since 2000 and, most years, come 25 December, I’ll be doing the ward round. As a junior doctor, I didn’t have much choice about doing the Christmas Day shift. But since becoming a consultant, I have
Most of those commenting on the guilt or innocence of Lucy Letby – the nurse who is serving 15 whole-life jail terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others – don’t know what it’s like to work alongside a killer nurse. I do. Benjamin Geen, whom I worked with at Horton General
I have spent a quarter of a century caring for people dying from smoking. Deaths of this sort are not only premature but often horrible. My mother’s death from lung cancer was both. The puritan nature of my medical heart should, therefore, leap up at the new restrictions of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, introduced
These days, it’s fashionable to get deliveries of vegetable boxes. Some do it through devotion to the dour idol of seasonality; the true worshipper knows they are buying a challenge. Many great recipes are created to deal with gluts and shortages. Digby Anderson, in his wonderful Spectator food column, pointed out that every good kitchen
Over my quarter-of-a-century of being a doctor, I have overseen thousands of deaths. For a busy hospital physician, this is not an unusual number. Helping people die is a core part of our job. In the Commons today, the Assisted Dying Bill gets its first reading. But the debate about this bill is missing a
Kemi Badenoch kicked up an almighty stink when she argued at the weekend that not all cultures are ‘equally valid’ when it comes to immigration. The Tory leadership contender was forced to clarify her comments, made in the Sunday Telegraph. ‘I actually think it extraordinary to think that’s an unusual or controversial thing to say,’
The NHS uses 130,000 pagers, 10 per cent of the world’s total, and a fraction that slightly increased on 17 September when several thousand of those belonging to Hezbollah exploded. In fact, the NHS, where I work, and Hezbollah share certain problems when it comes to communication infrastructure. A few years ago, I was delighted
‘The wise bustle and laugh as they walk, but fools bustle and are important,’ wrote F.L. Lucas a century ago. ‘And this, probably is all the difference between them.’ The government and the British Medical Association, who yesterday announced that henceforth junior doctors will be called ‘resident doctors’, are bustling and self-important fools. I was
