Cracking up, to be broadcast this coming Sunday on BBC2, will be the second television programme to be broadcast in the context of the BBC’s Headroom campaign for mental health and wellbeing (bbc.co.uk/headroom). I had a preview at a screening organised by the Royal Society of Medicine. The documentary provided a moving insight into journalist […]
Category: Editors at large
Fiona Godlee: Why pharma should not be allowed to fill the gap in patient information
There was one thing we were all agreed on – proposers and opposers alike – at the Great Oxford Debate last week: there’s a big gap in the quality and quantity of information for patients. Where we disagreed – and starkly – was whether the drug industry should be allowed to fill that gap. Yes […]
Trish Groves on research in India
Just back from my first visit to India, which the Lonely Planet guide rightly says is much more of a continent than a country. Three days in Delhi and three in Mumbai barely scratched the surface, but left me resolved to return there for longer. The day before we left home Delhi was bombed by […]
Trish Groves on the (only?) bank that’s growing
I made my deposit this week in UK Biobank. I was recruited because my age lies between 40-69 and I live within 10 miles of an assessment centre. At least I do now: like a dodgy business, the centre (on the 3rd floor of a gloomy office next door to Zorba’s Snacks) will be here […]
Birte Twisselmann at the annual meeting of the AGMS
Some months ago I was invited to the Anglo-German Medical Society’s 49th annual meeting, to be held in Cologne on 11-14 September 2008. As a German national who trained as a technical editor with the BMJ and who translates medical papers from German into English in her spare time I accepted. […]
Tessa Richards: Postoperative posting
Sarah Palin may have raised the profile of female politicians, but I’m lifting my glass to the girls who saw me through surgery last week. I did spot the odd male among the panoply of health professionals who looked after me, but they were thin on the ground. From the consultant surgeon and anaesthetist to […]
Jessie Colquhoun: Standfirsts and softball
Last Tuesday I would have been starting my first term as a fourth year medical student. Instead I started my 11th week in the BMJ office as Student BMJ editor. The position is a year long, and then I’ll go back to Manchester medical school to join a new year. So it has taken eleven weeks to write this blog. I’ve […]
David Payne: The feelgood factor
What makes you feel good? Richard Smith asks Anna Donald in his last response to her blog about living with a life-threatening illness as a doctor. Anna will no doubt post on this very soon, and I look forward, as always, to reading her response. But Richard’s question/challenge struck a chord. Last week I returned […]
Juliet Walker: Free v. Open Access
Recent changes to the BMJ’s copyright licence and the information it includes in research articles means that they can be formally listed as open access articles in PubMed Central and other repositories. So should we change the labels of open access research articles on our website from “free” to “open access”? […]
Elizabeth Loder: The sex lives of older people
A recently published BMJ paper on sex at 70 attracted the attention of the medical columnist for the New York Times. It also caught the attention of NYT readers, as evidenced by the 100+ responses to the article that have so far been posted online. The Swedish study reported on the results of four surveys […]