• Yes, you read that headline correctly—Jeremy Hunt is accusing doctors of being irresponsible over their handling of the new contract for junior doctors. As Gareth Iacobucci reports, the health secretary told the Conservative Party conference that the BMA was being “utterly irresponsible” in the way it has handled changes to junior doctors’ contracts. He said the BMA was scaremongering by portraying the message that the government wanted to cut doctors’ pay.
• An analysis article questions the current orthodoxy that says home is the best and preferred place of death for most people. Kristian Pollock calls for greater attention to improving the experience of dying in hospital and elsewhere. “Given the projected increase in institutional deaths, the hospital needs to be reinvented as a viable alternative and place of excellent care for dying patients and their families,” Pollock says.
• In a letter, Sarah Thornton says it is time to reconsider the usefulness of multidisciplinary team meetings. “The current MDT approach is labour intensive, threatens patient autonomy and confidentiality, and lacks substantive evidence of benefit,” she says. “It is time to reconsider multidisciplinary team working so that the problems can be resolved or alternatives considered.”
• A BMJ Careers article by Marika Davies discusses some of the common medicolegal and ethical quandaries that doctors are likely to face through their working lives. Davies will be taking part in a seminar entitled “Tricky questions and tricky answers—an interactive guide to the situational judgment test” at the BMJ Careers Fair on Saturday 24 October. For more information go to careersfair.bmj.com.
Tom Moberly is the editor of BMJ Careers. Follow Tom on Twitter @tommoberly.