Doctor Emma Espiner watches TVNZ’s The Checkup, which promises to tell you the things about health that you really want to know. I lie to my doctor. It’s even worse now that I’m a doctor too and she treats me like a colleague. I pretend to know things that I don’t just so she doesn’t … Read more
Levin GP Glenn Colquhoun talks with books editor Catherine Woulfe about his new collection of poetry, Letters to Young People. Glenn Colquhoun is an acclaimed and accomplished poet. He has published four collections, including Playing God, in December 2002, which sold a massive 10,000 copies. He’s won a clutch of Montanas and the 2004 Prize … Read more
New technology could transform the lives of thousands of New Zealanders with type 1 diabetes, but the lack of government funding leaves much to be desired, writes Nicholas Agar. I’m a type 1 diabetic writing this with a sense of excitement about a breakthrough in the treatment of my disease. When I was diagnosed in … Read more
Dr Collin Tukuitonga pays tribute to his mentor, Dr Joe Williams, who passed away yesterday after a battle with Covid-19. I have a lot for which to be thankful to Dr Joe Williams, or Papa Joe as we call him in the Pasifika Medical Association family. I was a refugee from the military coup in … Read more
Nurses are the first people you’ll meet if you think you have Covid-19. Here, one of our frontline workers describes the rapid changes both healthcare workers and the public are facing. As told to Josie Adams. I was working at an urgent care clinic in East Auckland when the first reports of Covid-19 came out … Read more
A month ago, not many had heard of Ashley Bloomfield. But as the Covid-19 response has ramped up, the director-general of health has become a calm, reassuring presence in a time of uncertainty and fear. Rachel Thomas profiles him, in a piece first published on RNZ. Today, Saturday, director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield is … Read more
Medical centres around the country have been instructed to reduce the number of in-person consultations they conduct by 70%. Toby Hills, a doctor based in Porirua, explains the rationale behind this and what the public can do to support our primary care system. Even during a pandemic, humans still get sick for other reasons. Appendixes … Read more
This piece by Tracey Slaughter is one of the stand-outs from a new compilation, Strong Words, that showcases the best of the latest Landfall essay competition. Landfall editor Emma Neale wrote of it: ‘I could only read this essay in small bursts; as if I had to rebuild the ability to bear the agony and … Read more
There’s been outrage since it was revealed that up to one in five final year medical students at the University of Otago falsified their overseas placements by spending portions of that time travelling instead. But GP registrar and former Otago medical student Toby Hills finds himself empathising deeply with his younger colleagues. One of the … Read more
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Dr Brian Ward of soft-tissue repair company Aroa. Dr Paul Callaghan, who inspired Callaghan Innovation, had the idea … Read more
Rates of antidepressant medication dispensing are on the rise among young people, according to a new study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal today. What can this tell us about our prescribing habits and the demographics missing out? According to an article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, the rates of antidepressant dispensing (the … Read more
An extract from Benjamin Kingsbury’s The Dark Island, about the history of the leprosy patient colony on Quail Island, in Lyttelton Harbour. Books editor Catherine Woulfe writes: There are certain passages of Benjamin Kingsbury’s new book The Dark Island that make the reader wince and turn away. But then you turn back again, you can’t … Read more
A Canterbury startup is exposing medical equipment manufacturers’ deliberate one-use design tricks and proving that hospitals can reuse and recycle. There has been a lot of hype about the phasing out of plastic bags at supermarkets. But what about far more expensive items which only ever get used once and are then thrown away? A … Read more
Antibiotics are becoming increasingly less effective, so what treatments can we look to when the drugs stop working? With help from plant extracts, award-winning company HerbScience is seeking to breathe new life into how we treat bacterial infections. When Cynthia Hunefeld was just 10 years old, her father was hospitalised with a severe bacterial infection. … Read more
Gabrielle Jackson is a Sydney-based Guardian journalist who has written a book about her pain, and the pain of women, and the ways in which the medical system is making it worse. The book is called Pain and Prejudice: a call to arms for women and their bodies. It focuses on ‘women’s troubles’ – a … Read more
More than 600 psychologists in New Zealand have voted to continue the strike they began last month. They say poor pay, long hours, and an institutional lack of respect are causing a mass exodus. A month ago, on the 31st July, 600 APEX psychologists in 16 District Health Boards (DHBs) stopped working overtime. APEX has since … Read more
Each year, thousands of students embark on a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree, the first step in any number of challenging healthcare careers including dentistry, pharmacy and medicine. But what happens when you realise Health Sci isn’t for you? This story was first published in the Otago University student magazine Critic Te Arohi. It was … Read more
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to HoneyLab co-founder Dr Shaun Holt, creator of … Read more
The privilege many 21st-century parents think they have – to choose what illness will befall their children and how they will recover from it – is a relatively new phenomenon, writes historian Ayelet Zoran-Rosen Vaccines save lives. They have saved millions of lives in the last century, and the best proof of their success is the … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Strange political stoush over Pharmac, spy bosses concerned about political interference from overseas, and DOC investing heavily in 1080 alternatives. This story happened earlier in the week, but it’s worth going back to, to cover in depth. Government MPs have blocked a Select Committee inquiry into Pharmac, … Read more
Jack Tapsell is the product of a family dedicated to the health and wellbeing of Māori. The recent University of Otago medical graduate talks to Leonie Hayden about carrying on the legacy of his father and grandfather. As descendants of Phillip Tapsell, a Danish sailor who settled at Maketū near Rotorua in 1830, and Te Arawa … Read more
Māori students studying medicine at the University of Otago say they’re fed up with the ignorance they face over the way they’re selected into their second year of study, writes Te Aniwa Hurihanganui for RNZ. There are limited spaces in the second-year program and everyone in their first year has to reach a grade threshold. … Read more
Medical student Kera Sherwood-O’Regan on what the student loan extension means for Māori studying medicine. “Have you seen the news?!” There’s nothing like waking up to dozens of messages and tweets to jolt you out of bed with a deep sense of dread. I tried to keep a lid on the panic as I wondered … Read more
There are a handful of dead bodies in the Auckland Hilton and Don Rowe has seen them all. The controversial Body Worlds Vital exhibition is a powerful meditation on mortality and death, he writes. “We do not see things as they are,” goes the old Talmudic phrase, “We see them as we are.” How then … Read more
Within five years, science will likely have answered a controversial question: can the drug commonly called ecstasy treat psychiatric disorders? Gillinder Bedi from the University of Melbourne writes After some studies showing a positive effect, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is entering final clinical trials as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If these trials show positive … Read more
When you need to go, you need to go – unless you’re the type of person who has a hard time telling. Jihee Junn talks to the team behind wearable bladder sensor Uri-Go, winner of Callaghan Innovation’s C-Prize for 2017. Five and a half years ago, Mike Brown broke his back, leaving him paralysed from … Read more
Practitioner Donna Kerridge introduces the core philosophy behind Aotearoa’s oldest medical practice. “If modern society is to have a future, what we need above all is a renewed respect for nature and reverences for the life of all created things” – Jurger Moltmann The essence of rongoā Māori and many other indigenous health practices is … Read more
In the first of a new monthly column by Dr Lance O’Sullivan, the former New Zealander of the Year addresses the anti-establishment mood, and the potential of technology in the internet age to both challenge and enhance science and medicine. There is nothing new about rebelling against elites, but there is a deepening mood of … Read more
Our favourite animal expert Thom Adams is back to reassure us about our parenting choices by looking to the animal world. I’m not sure why, but first-time parents have this weird resistance to giving their kids medicine. It happened to me, and I don’t know why. Fever, snotty noses and coughs are all natural responses … Read more