Ten years ago I spoke to a medical col- league about his experience watching his wife deliver their first baby at a leading Sydney maternity unit. He was visibly shaken by the experience especially the lack of concern by healthcare staff about his wife’s extreme and untreat- ed pain.
Summer 2025 Newsletter
This month's feature article:
Obstetric Violence : Pejorative or Accurate?
Newsletter - Medical Issues
This month's feature article:
Forced Adoption Of Australian Children: Unabated Sadness, Anger and Guilt
From the 1950s in Australia forced adoptions were commonplace and led to severe consequences for the adoptive mothers and many adopted children. Since 2012 Australian State and Federal Governments have issued formal apologies and only the State of Victoria has an established redress scheme which includes modest financial compensation packages.
Spring 2025 Newsletter
This month's feature article:
Behcet’s Disease (Malignant Aphthosis) and the Silk Route
I was recently visiting Istanbul for the Annual Scientific Meeting of the World Association of Medical Law.
This got me thinking about the famous Turkish dermatologist Dr Hulusi Behçet - born in Istanbul ,who described Behcet’s syndrome : a condition marked by oral and genital ulcerations , chronic relapsing uveitis and erythema nodosum.
Winter 2025 Newsletter
This month's feature article:
Forced Adoption-in the 1950’s 1960’s & 1970’s in Australia
It is estimated that 250,000 Australians were affected by policies and practices of forced adoption, with most adoptions occurring between 1950 and 1975. Unmarried mothers were forced, pressured or coerced to give up their children rather than bear the shame and social stigma of pregnancy and birth outside marriage.
Newsletter - Medical Issues
This month's feature article:
The Ageing Surgeon: Unmasking Impairment
Mick O’Connor and Bill Madden*
Australian age-related anti-discrimination laws prevent discrimination in the workplace on grounds of age alone. However, the ageing surgeon can face physical and cognitive challenges which may threaten patient safety. In 2023 8.4% of Australian surgeons and 8.8% of general practitioners were aged 70 years or older. On 7 August 2024, the Medical Board of Australia (MBA) ...
Newsletter - Autumn 2025
This month's feature article:
Black Box Billing & Informed Financial Consent
Black box billing is a term for healthcare costs which are not transparent or poorly communicated to patients. Such billing can be incomprehensible to patients. Some authors assert that the ‘financial toxicity’ of medical care is a significant source of patient harm. It may lead to avoidance of medical care ,reticence to undergo surgery or other treatment ,poor compliance with postoperative medications especially in cancer care and perhaps changing providers to obtain more affordable but perhaps less effective treatment alternatives.
Newsletter - Winter 2024
This month's feature article:
Asthma in Pregnancy
I well remember a maternal death from asthma in Dublin during a Caesarean section. The anaesthetists were devastated.
What may have caused that was the use of ergometrine after the baby was delivered. This is a risk factor for bronchoconstriction especially when general anaesthesia is combined.
In my experience that fact is not well appreciated by clinicians In Australia 12.7% of pregnant women suffer asthma.
