The Rise of the Nasty Women
Each year I teach a lecture on gender and health to my third-year students. Alongside ideas of gender roles and norms, gendered power relations and the move from a binary to a spectrum understanding of gender, I introduce the idea...
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Where has all the kindness gone?
In October 2015 I wrote about the implications of the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour leader standing on the pledge of a new “kinder politics and a more caring society”. I talked about the glimmer of hope offered...
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“APPY” NEW YEAR: self-surveillance, big brother and the worried well
I got a new watch for Christmas. It tells me how far I walk each day, how many calories I burn off through movement and it reminds me to stand up and move around every hour. It rewards me when...
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“A Kinder Politics and a More Caring Society”
Jeremy Corbyn stood for election as the leader of the UK Labour party on the pledge of a new “kinder politics and a more caring society”. Taken at face value it seems difficult to see how anyone can argue, or...
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Children in Need of Charity?
Each year the country comes together in mass acts of philanthropy, raising money in all kinds of inventive, extraordinary and impressive ways to help children who are less fortunate than they are. Each year a significant amount of money is...
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The Bad Patient
Questions of good patients and bad patients mean different things to professionals and policy makers. Is patient empowerment something tangible or are patients simply a pawn between these competing interests?
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In search of a label
There have long been calls to stop labelling children as having special needs. Department of Education figures released in 2012 show that 19.8% of pupils in England have special educational needs, of which 2.8% have statements of SEN. And yet...
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NHS 111 – Improving efficiency or destroying the ‘brand’?
NHS 111 need not necessarily be the calamity it has become. This calamity is driven more by financial under investment than a more pervasive crisis of care.
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Taking responsibility for our health
Last week the chairman of NICE, David Haslam called for patients to stop being deferential to doctors and be more proactive in ensuring that they receive the best healthcare available. He argues that, patients should be more aware of the...
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Obamacare, Individualism v Solidarity, and the NHS
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) came into force in the USA in June 2012 to regulate health insurance and curtail some of the worst practices engaged in by the for profit health care industry. The aim was to make affordable...
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The Inter-generational blame game
Older people are costing us money. They are using disproportionately more of the NHS, social care and welfare budgets, and expenditure on prescription drugs is significantly higher for the over 65s than their younger peers. Older people are costing the...
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On Brexit, Nurses and Migrant Workers in the NHS