freelance science journalist and author
Medical reporting
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
From The Saturday Paper, 24 August 2024: In September 2020, the United Kingdom government commissioned the British Academy – the national academy for the humanities and social sciences – to explore the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. What they got in March 2021 was a report titled “The Covid Decade”. Even then, in the … Continue reading Dispatch from the long Covid frontline
From the Guardian, 1 April 2024: There’s a meme featuring a confident, suave, smiling Henry Cavill – the actor best known for playing Superman – posing for photographers on the red carpet. Sneaking up behind him is wild-looking, maniacally gleeful co-star Jason Momoa. To me, this is the perfect metaphor for perimenopause. Cavill is at … Continue reading ‘I’m as baffled as the next ovary-owner’: navigating the science of treating menopause
From the BMJ, 5 March 2024: Fewer than one in 10 Australians now smoke tobacco daily, although rates of vaping in teenagers and young adults have almost tripled in five years, a survey of more than 21 000 people has found. Research by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in people aged 14 and over … Continue reading Smoking rates in Australia drop below 10%, but vaping increases
Bianca Nogrady 