Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
After 25 years as an editor, I’ve learnt in my eight years as an ex-editor that it’s mostly miserable being at the author end of a very unequal power relationship. We read a lot about doctors aiming to be patient centered, but whoever heard of editors being author centred? The brutal truth, as a senior […]
Complaints against doctors feature communication more than anything else, which is one reason why communication skills have become universal in medical education. Unfortunately we still have some way to go—as this anecdote shows. A close friend has just been in for an operation as a day case. He’s a diabetic and has got very skilled […]
It’s been a bad week. I’ve flown 6000 miles to attend two meetings where not only did I not manage to say anything useful but I also came across as stupid. Such experiences always lead me to reflect on my extreme deficiencies and marvel that I’ve got as far as I have. I’m writing this […]
Last week I walked from Poole to Chapman’s Pool along the South West Coastal Path, and as I passed through Swanage memories flooded back, some of them very painful. This is where as a 10 year old I suffered the most pain I’ve suffered in my 60 years—from homesickness. Some of the pain comes back […]
Have you heard the phrase “whole of government and whole of society?” If you haven’t you soon will. It’s the summary of the formula for fixing many of the world’s most intractable problems—like climate change (or climate disruption, as Martin McShane suggests we call it). I heard it first at the United Nations meeting on […]
I used to be part of running a course for editors of medical journals, and on each course we’d encounter editors, usually distinguished professors, who worked evenings and weekends on journals for free. They did so as a contribution to their specialty and for a dollop of honour. In their naivety they imagined that the […]
I was once the editor of the BMJ and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. I work for a $100 billion company. I’m an unpaid professor at both Warwick University and Imperial College London. But, mighty and pretentious as this sounds, I’m down there in the gutter when it comes to accessing scientific articles, […]
Most of my work is concerned with non-communicable disease (NCD) in low and middle income countries, so I’ve got to know a fair bit about the subject. But yesterday I spent an afternoon at Imperial College listening to a series of short presentations on NCD in low middle income countries (LMIC), and I learnt a […]
Palliative care globally lacks funding, professionals, and medicines (particularly morphine) and suffers from policy neglect, said David Praill, chief executive of Help the Hospices, opening a meeting in London on global palliative care. Palliative care should cover all patients, all diseases, all nations, all settings, all dimensions (physical, psychological, social, spiritual), and begin earlier, said […]
What do you think is the risk factor that causes the most deaths globally? Until I saw the data I’d have answered tobacco. But in fact it’s high blood pressure. As the figure (see below) shows, tobacco causes about six million deaths a year but high blood pressure around eight million. That’s why the Global […]