Our duty

It's our duty!

What is our 'duty of care'?

Clinical scenario You have just started in post with a single-handed GP. You like the work, the patient group and all the staff you work with. After a while, however, you begin to feel just a little uneasy following a number of remarks from patients: “The doctor did not listen”, “I am not sure why the doctor prescribed this” and “I’d like a second opinion”. You have also noticed in passing on a...

Antimicrobial drug resistance threat: our duty towards future generations.

1Assistant-Director General, Health Security and Environment, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland ([email protected]). Since their availability in the 1940s, antimicrobial drugs have been a miracle. For example, penicillin reduced death rates among patients with pneumonia and bacteraemia from approximately 90% to 10%. Seventy years later, however, increasing levels of antimicrobial res...

Custom kids and the moral duty to genetically engineer our children.

The BrAIST study and the implications for scoliosis screening: our duty for raising awareness and advocacy

Background A recently published NIH-funded study named “Bracing in Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis Trial” (BrAIST) affirmed the efficacy of bracing for moderate adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) and reduced surgical recommendations in braced patients. The implications of this study are numerous. BrAIST affirms the value of bracing, but also confirms the importance of wear time, and points t...