When it all goes wrong, that’s when you are really tested. Quantas pilot Captain David Evans described what happened when an engine disintegrated in mid air on Flight QF32 and three large metal shards pierced various parts of the huge A380 aircraft causing major systems failure. Only one of four engines could operate at normal […]
Category: Editors at large
Luisa Dillner: Identity and humanity at TEDMED, day 3
It’s at the end of a long TEDMED day that Andrew Solomon comes onto the stage. He looks a bit shiny, with a smart blue suit (did no one tell him the dress code is resort casual?) and a high forehead. He turns out to be single handedly worth the price of admission to this […]
Domhnall MacAuley: International Quality Forum, day 2
“Stroke care was woeful,” said Dame Ruth Carnall, former chief executive of NHS London, in her sobering account of efforts to change the system. Less than 1% of patients had thrombolysis, less than 50% were treated in specialist stroke units, and standards were low across a whole range of indicators. Poor care, low standards, and […]
Luisa Dillner: TEDMED, day 2
The best thing about TEDMED is its delegates. Firstly they genuinely want to talk to you. Secondly they are all really interesting. Everyone has either worked for NASA or is at the very least a CEO of an entrepreneurial healthcare company. The man I sit next to at one session is a neurologist who has […]
Readers’ editor: Video abstracts
Cuba’s population witnessed huge economic change after losing the former Soviet Union as a trading partner in 1989. Food shortages caused by the downturn led to obesity rates falling from 12% to 7% in six years, an average weight loss of between 4-5kg across the whole population. The country also introduced new green policies, including […]
Domhnall MacAuley: International Quality Forum, day 1
On welcoming 3300 delegates from 80 countries to the International Quality Forum in London, home of the BMJ, Fiona Godlee (editor in chief, BMJ) asked us to remember the recent marathon trauma at the home of Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston. All the more poignant as we congregated at Excel, the registration centre […]
Luisa Dillner on TEDMED
I want the world to be a better, healthier place. Really I do. And now, at my first TEDMED conference in Washington DC, I have high hopes of hearing from people already working on that. TEDMED runs a fairly linear conference structure—big auditorium, big thinkers on the stage, for short, pack a punch presentations. At […]
Domhnall MacAuley: No easy prescription for physical activity
April 6th was World Physical Activity Day—did you miss it? Probably good news. Best to keep doctors out of it. Let me explain: I believe passionately in the benefits of physical activity, have researched it, published, editorialised, practised, and promoted it at every opportunity. The benefits of physical activity are undisputed and physical activity is […]
Readers’ editor: What is a “BMJ man (or woman)?”
In the early 1990s I spent the weekend at the home of a friend’s parents, both of them GPs. I’d recently started work as a political news reporter on the GP magazine Pulse. “Never read it,” said my friend’s dad. “I’m a BMJ man through and though.” He’s now retired, but whenever I visit a […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Recognising good medical teachers
What is a good clinical teacher? Asked to host an awards ceremony, I have been thinking about it. At the BMJ we focus on “Helping doctors make better decisions” and in the education section we produce great content. That’s the easy part. Teaching is much more than reproducing this content. Its about passing on knowledge […]