freelance science journalist and author
Medical reporting
From the Guardian, 29 April 2025: You walk into a room and forget why. Someone introduces themselves at a party and within seconds you’ve forgotten their name. You can’t remember where you parked the car. You’ve put your phone in the fridge. You can’t recall your granddaughter’s name. Your best friend dies and you keep … Continue reading Signs of dementia or normal forgetfulness? How to tell the difference
From Medscape Medical News, 6 May 2025: A shoe-based biomechanical intervention worn for a short time each day may achieve greater improvements in low back pain and greater reductions in the risk for total knee replacement surgery than standard physical therapy, according to two studies presented at the World Congress on Osteoarthritis (OARSI) 2025 Annual … Continue reading Novel shoe intervention may cut low back pain, delay knee arthroplasty in osteoarthritis
From Medscape Medical News, 10 March 2025: Medicare, Australia’s national health insurance scheme, is set for its biggest boost in funding since its creation half a century ago, as both major political parties promise billions ahead of this year’s federal election. The incumbent Labor government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, announced an AU$8.5 billion … Continue reading Australian politicians promise billions for healthcare
From Medscape Medical News, 14 February 2025: Junior doctors in Australia’s largest state are on the brink of strike action over working conditions, after a hospital administrator derided them as “clinical marshmallows [sic]” in a leaked email. The email from an administrator at John Hunter Hospital in New Lambton Heights, Australia, was commenting on a … Continue reading Australian junior doctors protest working conditions
From Medscape, 22 January 2025: More than half of psychiatrists working in public mental health in Australia’s largest state have resigned in response to what they say is years of unresolved workforce shortages and underresourcing. The mass resignations encompass more than 180 of the nearly 300 psychiatrists in New South Wales. The clinicians left their … Continue reading Australian public psychiatrists resign en masse
From The Saturday Paper, 18 January 2025: Psychiatrist Prachi Brahmbhatt likens the current state of public mental healthcare in New South Wales to battlefield medicine. “When the clinical leader is so pushed that they don’t have time to stop and think about the decisions that they’re making… while you’re trying to do seven things at … Continue reading The crisis in the NSW mental health system
From the BMJ, 5 December 2024: Children and young people aged under 16 will be banned from a range of social media platforms in Australia within a year, after the federal parliament passed a law to “deliver greater protections for young Australians during critical stages of their development.” The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum … Continue reading Australia bans under-16s from social media “to protect their development”
From The Saturday Paper, 2 November 2024: In 2018, the Australian government conducted a simulated pandemic stress test of how well federal departments on the frontline of a major health crisis would cope. It found they would perform well enough for shorter or “ordinary” crises but were not equipped for a significant, near-existential crisis dragging … Continue reading Covid-19 inquiry finds key failings in pandemic response
From the Guardian, 27 August 2024: I call it “the hill of death”: a steep uphill section of dirt road towards the end of an otherwise pleasant and not-too-taxing walk in the scenic Blue Mountains. It’s challenging enough to get up it walking forwards but my friend and I both feel pretty cocky about our … Continue reading Be kind, rewind: is backwards walking any better than walking forwards?
From Nature, 25 September 2024: “Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny.” With those words, Kristin Scott Thomas’s character in the TV show Fleabag nailed a truth: that to be female is to be over-represented in statistics about pain. A study of more than 27,000 people in 19 European countries found … Continue reading How pain is misunderstood and ignored in women
Bianca Nogrady 