Last month we drew attention to three critical pieces of data that painted a picture of the piece by piece dismantling of the public health specialist workforce. Consultant appointment processes have dropped considerably in the last three years, registrars at end of training are failing to get substantive full time consultant posts, and academic public […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: Death becomes fashionable
Death is becoming fashionable. London’s Southbank is planning a two day festival of death, the BMJ has a Christmas editorial urging us to think of death as a friend rather than an enemy, and last week the Centre for Humanities and Health at King’s College London held a death workshop where philosophers and doctors worked […]
Douglas Noble on Lifebox
It’s great to see patient safety getting such a prominent focus on bmj.com this Christmas with support for the charity Lifebox. Lifebox’s first aim is trying to ensure a pulse oximeter gets into every operating theatre across the world. I hope we’ll all manage to give generously http://www.bmj.com/multimedia/video/2011/12/02/lifebox-appeal-atul-gawande The desire for safer surgery has gathered momentum in […]
Marge Berer: Jingle pills indeed
Many years ago now, when news of female sterilisation first came out, Catholic priests in Puerto Rico and other Catholic countries preached from their pulpits against women being sterilised. As a result many more women learned that sterilisation existed, and many went out from church asking where to get it. In effect, the church gave […]
Richard Smith: Hauling the private sector onboard to combat diabetes
The golden phrase for countering non-communicable disease (NCD) is that we need a “whole of government and whole of society approach.” An important step on that path is obviously for all parties to talk together, and that’s why the International Diabetes Federation for the first time started its biannual conference with a “global diabetes forum,” […]
Martin McShane: Adapting
Every two months I get to sit down with the GP Chair and Chief Operating Officer from each of the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in Lincolnshire. Ever since the reforms were announced we have retained a focus on delivery. We have thought of the development of the CCGs as revolving around delivery. There is no […]
Tiago Villanueva: The European union of general practitioners
Whilst Italy’s government was falling, general practitioners from 21 countries convened in Turin on 11 and 12 November for the autumn meeting of the European Union of General Practitioners (UEMO), which is a leading European medical organisation based in Brussels. As well as providing clinical care to their patients, there are a number of reasons why general practice […]
Martin McShane: Execution
The operating framework for the NHS has now been published. Reading through the detail I was struck by the tasks laid at the door of PCT clusters. These transitional organisations know the date of their death. Despite that, there is an expectation they will continue to deliver, whilst acting as a catalyst for the reforms: […]
David Kerr: Complaints via social media
Social media seems to be the modern equivalent of the stocks. The main objective of the stocks was public humiliation. Nowadays, any member of the public can use social media to highlight grievances they might have against companies, organisations, and institutions and post them for all to see and comment on. […]
Richard Smith: The happiness questionnaire
My son, a chef, is part of a “pop up think tank” of people under 35 working on happiness. They are gathering evidence through a questionnaire, and I thought that some BMJ readers might be interested in both the questions and my answers. You might like to try answering the questions yourself. […]