The out of hours workload of a training practice in a suburban and semirural area on the south coast of England was studied for one year. An overall rate of contact of 273/1000 patients was found, which indicated a workload greater than that reported in most other studies. The duty doctor received over 35 telephone calls from patients during some Saturdays (1200 Saturday to 0800 Sunday) and Sun...

The use of mortality data in the form of standardised mortality ratios (SMRs) to measure the need for health care resources in the Resource Allocation Working Party (RAWP) formula in England has been criticised for underestimating the wider effects of adverse socioeconomic conditions on need, particularly in inner city areas. To assess this criticism, we explored the relationships at NHS Region...

OBJECTIVE To examine whether variations in the activities of general practice among family health service authorities can be explained by the populations characteristics and the organisation and resourcing of general practice. DESIGN The family health services authorities were treated as discrete primary health care systems. Nineteen performance indicators reflecting the size, distribution, a...

Dr Gulliford is to be congratulated on reporting the first examination of the relationship between the availability of primary care doctors and population health in England. His work follows the calculations in the USA by Starfield that each extra family physician is associated with a reduction of deaths of 34 US citizens per 100 000 population, a finding not replicated for specialists. His fin...

The Hidden Persuaders research group examines ‘brainwashing’ in the Cold War for roles, real and imagined, played by psychologists, psychiatrists psychoanalysts. Our project engaged young people an exploration of history fears about brainwashing, enabled them to explore their thoughts ideas forces that shape lives contemporary society, through film-making. Working with three schools Camden area...

background:  clavicle fractures are common and usually heal without complications. in this study, we evaluated the outcomes of non-operative versus operative management of displaced fractures.   methods:  in a prospective clinical trial study, sixty-five patients with displaced clavicle mid-shaft fractures were nonrandomly divided in two treatment groups. the first group underwent non-operative...

background: some studies have shown the possible role of protein‑energy malnutrition (pem) in persistence of endemic goiter in iodine replenished areas. the present study was conducted to assess the association between pem and goiter in schoolchildren of isfahan, iran. methods: in a cross‑sectional study using multistage cluster random‑sampling, 2331 schoolchildren with age ranged from 6‑13 yea...

Basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors regulate the differentiation of various tissues in a vast diversity of species. The bHLH protein Atonal was first identified as a proneural gene involved in the formation of mechanosensory cells and photoreceptor cells in Drosophila (Jarman et al., 1993, 1994). Atonal is expressed in sensory organ precursors and is required and sufficient for ...