Tag: regulation

 

Surgical and psychiatric malpractice compared

As a result of recent media publicity about surgeon’s performance, I began thinking that I rarely if ever see any stories in the media about psychological harm caused by failures in psychiatric treatments. I reflected on this and thought, that with surgery it is easier to spot errors in retrospect because patients can be subject to x-rays, scans and other tests to show physical things that went wrong procedurally. But in psychiatry where we use medications (or  occasionally ECT), thereRead More …

Accountable health services

All public health services are accountable in the UK. This post provides an in-depth exploration of patient rights and accountability within the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, focusing mainly on services in England. It delves into the sources of legally protected rights for patients, the mechanisms for holding the NHS accountable, and the challenges in upholding standards. The article highlights the importance of patient involvement in healthcare and outlines various ways patients can become more involved. The roleRead More …

Hysteria, physician assisted paroxysms and sexual relations

This post is an off-shoot from Strange Medical Treatments in History. Introduction I began digging deeper into many of those treatments but then got stuck on what was termed ‘Physician Assisted Paroxysms‘ (PAP). I became totally flabbergasted by what I found. It would have been too much to add to that post, so I decided to pull all that I could find into this one. In essence PAP was actually and originally manual masturbation of the clitoris. That was seenRead More …

Off-label and off-licence prescribing

In the UK, the terms “off-label” and “off-licence” prescribing are often used interchangeably, but they refer to slightly different concepts. The General Medical Council uses the term ‘unlicenced prescribing’.  The terms describe situations where a medication is prescribed in a manner that is not explicitly approved by the regulatory authorities. However, the specific circumstances for each term are as follows: Off-label prescribing: This occurs when a medication is prescribed for a purpose, dosage, or patient group that is not includedRead More …