For a research based on value. The failed model of antibiotics

Cristina Roure

As we have commented on some occasion in this blog, neither the price nor the volume of investment in R&D of the medicines corresponds to the value they provide. Antibiotics, along with vaccines, have saved millions of lives, have allowed to address challenges such as transplants and complex surgeries with guarantees of success and, if this were not enough, they also add enormous value to the productivity of the agricultural sector.

More time to generate quality conversations with patients?

Anna Sant

The fight of the click in the consultation

Two studies published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine and Health Affairs compared the time that doctors spend with the patient in consultation with the time they spend with the computer. Jordi Varela analyzed these results in his post dedicated to Danielle Ofri, a Bellevue Hospital doctor and professor at the NYU School of Medicine, who said, referring to the electronic medical record (EHR), that "The beast is insatiable and every time it needs more and more food. It ends up claiming all the time I dedicate to human interaction and, given that I ought to, I have to stay late, just to satisfy its cravings.” Both studies concluded that the time spent on the screen is longer than that dedicated to the patient.

A Viktor Frankl for the healthcare system

Gustavo Tolchinsky

“For only to the extent to which man commits himself to the fulfilment of his life's meaning, to this extent he also actualizes himself.” 

Viktor Frankl

Recently, in a meeting about the health of physicians, Dr. Clare Gerada, responsible PHP caring program for NHS doctors, commented on something that had never crossed my mind... How is it that we continue accepting that the Declaration of Geneva, which emanates from the Hippocratic Oath and was ratified in 2005 by the World Medical Association in France, keeps stating that "we (doctors) promise to consecrate our lives to the service of humanity"? Such a load seems unaffordable in these terms, but seeing the conditions in which we work, gives us the feeling that sometimes we are paying with a large part of our lives practicing as doctors.

Migration and mental health: the risk of exclusion

Andrés Fontalba

The human being has managed to colonize all habitable regions of our planet thanks to migrations. Due to cultural, economic, political or geographic movements, the population has moved en masse from prehistory to the present day, these movements being in some cases spontaneous and others forced. It is, therefore, a process of mobility intimately linked to us as a species.