
blogs


The government’s new ‘prevent duty guidance’ – imposing political correctness on university groups
The Government’s Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, currently being considered by the House of…

Freedom of conscience in the new Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct
A new year seems a good time to launch a new set of guidelines, and the NMC have chosen this January…

Disaster response: Malawi faces floods
Many people here daily live life on the edge, so it doesn’t take much to push it over into…

Why abortion is not the best solution for pregnancy following rape or incest
This incredibly difficult and sensitive issue has come into public discussion again as the Northern…

Why have we become so scared of disability?
When I went to see the midwife at 36 weeks of pregnancy, I did not expect to find myself leaving in…

Buffer zones – a form of subverting freedom of speech and real choice
It would appear that once again, liberties are under threat of being curtailed by the proponents of…

Ebola: Christmas is cancelled
As many of us stop work and get ready to enjoy Christmas, let’s spare a thought for the people of…

Conscientious Objection and the worrying implications of the Glasgow midwives case
The right for health professionals to exercise their conscientious objection to participating…

Ebola: dispatches from the frontline
CMF member Sam Dunnet is working as Staff Health Manager for Save the Children in Sierra Leone. Here…

Court rules that unborn babies are ‘organisms’: a look behind the headlines
Seven years ago, a baby girl (who cannot be named for legal reasons) was born to a 19 year old mother…

Censuring debate and free speech at Oxford University
Not for the first time, a college at a top UK university has completely shut down an attempt to organise…
Walk75 | Prayer Walk for Health
This year, we celebrate 75 years since the Christian Medical Fellowship came into being. Over that time, God has done some amazing things through Christian medics, nurses, midwives, and others coming together to pray, study God’s word, serve and encourage one another, and share the good news of Jesus. In the UK and worldwide, we […]
McArthur ‘Assisted Dying’ Bill announced
On 29 March 2024, Liam McArthur, MSP, announced his ‘Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill’ to the Scottish Parliament. This will now be debated and scrutinised by the Parliament. If passed, it would mean the legalisation of doctor-assisted suicide for those with an advanced illness who choose it, within the Scottish NHS. The […]
A confluence of evils
There are times when you see a confluence of evils merging from afar, but they merge so slowly that most people remain totally unaware of them, or if they are they just shrug their shoulders and move on. I first wrote about my concerns over organ donation from those requesting euthanasia (ODfE) in 2017 when Belgium […]
Midwifery in the headlines
Midwifery was in the news for all the wrong reasons at the end of last year. As a midwife of ten years, I was heartbroken to read headlines from The Times that said: ‘Midwives “toxic” working conditions putting babies’ lives at risk, report finds‘ and The Telegraph that said: “Russian roulette’ maternity units risk lives […]
Striking the right balance
how can Christian medics decide about industrial action? Until a decade ago, I was a medic struggling through the NHS quagmire. So, when I had the opportunity to join the CMF Junior Doctors Conference back in November 2023, I prepared myself to meet lots of doctors now near drowning in the thickening muck. In the […]
Want to change the future?
Having grown up in a TV family, I particularly loved movies that fostered the imagination, especially time travel. To be able to change what could have been or what might be, was the stuff of childhood dreams. What would you change if you could time travel? Suppose you could jump in a time machine, and […]
The ‘Letby effect’ on this paediatric nurse
Firstly, let me say that I cannot even begin to imagine the grief the families involved in this case must have gone through these last eight years and are still going through. The atrocities committed by Lucy Letby are chilling and deeply distressing. Honestly, it doesn’t seem enough to say that my ‘thoughts and prayers’ […]
The UK’s first womb transplant – what the media missed out
The first UK ‘womb transplant’, carried out by Richard Smith’s team in Oxford and announced at the end of August, understandably gained a lot of press coverage and was heralded by some as the ‘dawn of a new era’. In fact, the first uterus transplant was carried out in 2000 in Saudi Arabia in a […]
Lucy Letby – a warning for NHS culture
The tragic loss of life and heartache caused by Lucy Letby is beyond imagination. Our hearts go out to all those affected. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made that look even worse with the power and accuracy of the ‘retrospectoscope’. Patient safety was not put first, nor was the dogged pursuit of the truth of what happened […]
Lucy Letby- a deep grief
This is such a deeply disturbing case. One of the most horrifying scandals to ever hit the NHS. A neonatal nurse killed seven babies and attempted to murder six more. The perpetrator being a nurse is causing our nurse and midwife members, and us in the CMF Nurses & Midwives team, real grief. First, we’d […]
Doctors on strike – reflections of a conflicted consultant
On 1 August 1983, my life changed forever. I started work in the NHS. I lost all that I had known of normal life and have spent the last 40 years working in a broken system. I am in no doubt it needs fixing. Navigating endless demands with inadequate resources has been costly. From the […]
Complete societal capture on abortion
The sentencing of a woman for two years imprisonment for performing a home abortion with pills obtained via a phone consultation raises lots of questions. However, the main question asked in an almost universal chorus of headlines was why are our ‘archaic’ and ‘unfair’ abortion laws still in place? ‘A woman has been jailed for […]