Listen carefully to the language that surrounds people with pain. Listen to how you talk about them. Are you increasing their disability by using well-intentioned pain cliches?
- Conjoint Clinical Associate Professor, Deakin University School of Medicine and Specialist Pain Medicine Physician, Deakin University
I’ve previously made the case that all codeine-containing pharmaceutical products be sold with prescriptions. In summary, there is mounting evidence that over-the-counter, codeine-containing medications…
My apologies for the slightly sectarian title of this piece. I remain an enculturated Catholic despite being a long time lapsed. I think the metaphor is pretty appropriate, as Medibank Private is truly…
Nearly every second person in the world had a headache at least once in the past year. But these can feel very different, depending on which of the nearly 200 types of headache you have.
This week is National Pain Week so it’s only fitting that I should climb onto the soapbox again in support of people with persistent pain, their employers, workmates, friends, and families. The economic…
Two Australian doctors have taken to the pages of the prestigious journal, the BMJ to make their international colleagues aware of the extraordinary assault on medical ethics contained in the recently…
Frequent commenter on this column and Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM) executive member Dr Sue Ieraci tweeted a link to this extraordinary defence of homeopathy in pharmacies, in the online pharmacy…
Ketamine is a drug which was originally used in anaesthesia, but which is now more often used in managing pain. It acts upon a range of different neurotransmitter systems in the body and it’s not a drug…
The extraordinary clash of views between Treasurer Joe Hockey and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Brian Owler about the funding for a new medical school in Perth is just the latest example…
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has called for submissions on the idea of deleting codeine from Schedule 3 (pharmacy only) availability and moving it to Schedule 4 (prescription only). From…
We have seen plenty of media reporting of the harm done by “overprescribing” of opioid drugs for chronic pain (I use the quotation marks because I challenge anyone to identify what the “right” level of…
At the recent conference of the Australian Pain Society, I was delighted to see what had come of a very interesting research thread that I had been introduced to a few years ago. It concerns the role of…
The release today of the long-awaited NHMRC Statement and Advice on Homeopathy is just the latest in a series of pointless and ideologically motivated exercises that this peak scientific body has been…
Given the recent thawing in political attitudes in New South Wales and Victoria towards so-called medical marijuana, one could be forgiven for assuming that the medical care of certain individuals is being…
I have been waiting for a couple of weeks to see what the evidence was that new Health Minister Sussan Ley was going to be an improvement on her unlamented predecessor. After starting with a flourish…
One of the much-heralded platforms of the Abbott government is its promise to business to reduce red tape and burdensome regulatory obligations. Pharmaceuticals are a multi-billion dollar global industry…
During a conference-related sojourn in Florence a while ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Museo Galileo to pay homage to one of my intellectual heroes. As well as having a giftshop that I haunted…
At a time of year when we are flooded with advertisements for detox and weight loss products, I’ve been doing some detoxing of my own. Specifically, a day of fasting and bowel preparation for my colonscopy…
“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” - Otto von Bismarck So as well as deciding to financially kneecap bulk-billing GPs, the Federal Government has…
Australia’s oxycodone problem has thankfully not risen to the heights of the public health disaster that the USA is dealing with, but it’s been bad enough. Mundipharma, the company that makes OxyContin…
If the news coming out of Canbera tonight is accurate, the Federal Government has finally realized that their GP co-payment (really a tax given the way they intended to implement it) is actually what Rampaging…
Pharmacists are consistently held up as among the most respected and trusted of professionals. They fulfil an important role within the health professions of being the gatekeepers of medication dispensing…
I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started, all I had was swamp! Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ‘em! It sank into the swamp…
There may be many pitfalls in an argument which equates sensation in humans with nervous discharges from frogs skin. – Edgar Adrian, 1932 Nobel Prize in Medicine Humans seem to experience pain, whether…
Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are reliev’d, Or not at all. [1600-1 Shakespeare Hamlet iv. iii. 9] There are few more emotional decisions in medicine than the appropriate way to treat…
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