James Kildare

Anti-fragile: humans need risk, not ‘safe spaces’

13 November 2022 10:00 am

Last week I had a medical student shadowing me when we were called to the Emergency Department for a critically…

From mottos to slogans: the West is slipping

31 October 2022 1:00 pm

During a particularly long queue at Heathrow Airport – awaiting the pleasure of a malevolent little man, manhandling my personal…

Our collective immortality

20 September 2022 7:00 am

Over the last week many patients – I suspect, upon hearing my accent – have asked my opinion of the…

Medical students give conservatives hope for the future

25 June 2022 7:00 am

Those of us orientated to a more conservative perspective are failing on a number of levels, not least of which…

We all need a little ‘risk’ to survive

7 June 2022 1:00 pm

Is safety the best course of action? Our grandparents were willing to sacrifice their lives to preserve freedom for future…

The last few days (of chaos)

12 March 2022 12:49 am

The afternoon sunlight creeps down the wall and as the day trades its heat for the intensity of evening’s deeper…

The danger of hubris

7 March 2022 9:00 am

As the apocryphal tale of King Cnut goes, he commanded the sea: ‘You are subject to me, as the land…

Life is for living - not hiding

25 February 2022 9:00 am

A woman came to the emergency department (ED) with abdominal pain. She was in her mid-fifties and was not well.…

Are masks really worth it?

16 January 2022 12:00 pm

With N95 masks now mandatory in most hospital settings, this has sparked a lively debate therein. One of the most…

The importance of informed consent in the Covid era

11 January 2022 9:00 am

It used to go without saying that the morality of medical practice rested on informed consent. It is enshrined in…

Damage is being done to our medical profession

30 December 2021 12:00 pm

It may be that a major casualty from the pandemic is the damage done to the medical profession. Healthcare is…

A dangerous tone has crept into medical discourse

26 December 2021 4:00 am

A dangerous tone has crept into the medical discourse. Over the last year, it has become increasingly common to encounter…

My other coronavirus victims

9 June 2020 5:56 pm

To date, 103 people have died of coronavirus in Australia, none of them under the age of 40, and only…

Medicos should have shown more scepticism over lockdown

25 May 2020 1:02 pm

As a general rule, it might be fair to say that us doctors should be wary of politics. There are two sides to…