Ebola and the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence have, among other things, spared UK national newspaper editors the anxiety of how to fill column inches in the “silly season” month of August. The BMJ can at least drop a print and iPad issue, as it is doing this week, but we and other general medical […]
Category: David Payne
The BMJ Today: Feet and fudge
A calcaneal fracture can mean a two year recovery, with a stiff, painful, deformed foot that will not fit into a normal shoe. How does operative and non-operative treatment for intra-articular fractures compare? A research team led by Damian Griffin, professor of trauma and orthopaedic surgery at Warwick University Medical School, conclude in their randomised […]
The BMJ Today: Talking shit again
By the end of next month rural India could have an extra 5.2m toilets as part of a pre-election pledge by Narendra Modi, now prime minister, to build “toilets first and temples later.” Readers of The BMJ will no doubt be heartened by the Indian government’s announcement, coming seven years after sanitation topped a reader poll […]
Readers’ editor: A website needing more soft fruit
We like it when readers take the time and trouble to give us feedback. We’ve been particularly appreciative in the last two weeks as The BMJ’s new website beds down following its launch on 30 June. Some readers responded to the editorial published to mark the new website and the journal’s new name and logo. Eighty […]
The BMJ Today: New name, new logo, new website, some bugs
Writers of this daily update about new stuff published by The BMJ usually face an embarrassment of riches—more than 100 articles go online each week, along with dozens of rapid responses, video abstracts, and audio interviews. But yesterday hardly anything got published because we needed to clear the decks for a new website, which heralds […]
The BMJ Today: Late nights with Iain Chalmers
“Tired” pupils aged over 16 at a private school in Surrey are to start lessons at 1.30pm. The school’s headteacher Guy Holloway says the move is based on research by neuroscientists which says that teenagers have a biological predisposition to go to bed later and get up later, and better sleep in teenage years is […]
The BMJ Today: The climate change horse has bolted
Eric Chivian urges doctors to help tackle climate change, but shouldn’t the profession’s energies be spent tackling unsafe hospitals and under resourced healthcare systems? […]
Readers’ editor: Clichéd series titles, and “Save our Des”
Last month the journal launched the first in a series of in-depth reviews written by international experts—State of the Art—to highlight important areas of clinical medicine and academic inquiry. So far we have published two. The first article examined the mechanisms and clinical implications of neuropathic pain and, according to Google Analytics, has been viewed […]
The BMJ Today: Sponsorship, epilepsy, and votes
Welcome to this new blog category, The BMJ Today. We aim to post an update each weekday of recent articles and other content to have caught our eye. We hope it will function as an online editor’s choice, chosen by different members of The BMJ’s editorial team each day. Our first highlighted article is Drug treatment […]
David Payne: Books for the incurably curious
When John Keats switched from medicine to poetry he found a different way of healing people, according to Andrew Motion. Motion, a former poet laureate, attributes his interest in medicine and literature to the Romantic poet, whose biography he wrote in 1997. Unveiling the shortlist for 2014 Wellcome book prize in London this week, Motion, […]