Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
If your birth is not registered then you don’t exist, and yet a third of global births are not registered. If your death is not registered then your wife (or husband) may have poisoned you and not been caught, but two thirds of global deaths are not registered. Registration of births and deaths also allows […]
The NHS has to change radically if it is to survive. All those who study the NHS closely know that, but I’m not sure that all those who work in the NHS know it. And the necessity for radical change—as opposed to more money—features hardly at all in our depressingly shallow election. But how do […]
The Australian Medical Publishing Company (AMPCo), a creature of the Australian Medical Association, has just fired another editor of the Medical Journal Australia; that’s at least four (and probably more) in my professional lifetime. Over the same period the Canadian Medical Association has got rid of two, and the American Medical Association one. The British […]
Alain Enthoven, an economist and inventor of the internal market, described “flat of the curve” healthcare where increased expenditure on healthcare produces no further benefit. Are we at that point in many health systems in high income countries, including Britain? Enthoven’s graph is best thought of as theoretical insofar as it’s not easy to measure […]
Uwe Reinhardt, the world’s funniest health economist, says that eventually all health systems will be the same: whatever they want for the rich; an insurance based system for the majority; and a rump service for the poor. “Never in Britain,” say Reinhardt’s British friends, but I wondered if he might be right as I read […]
Perhaps because Britain is a land of atheists, the British don’t understand the importance of faith based organisations as well as they should. Stephanie Ferguson, director of the International Council of Nurses’ Leadership for Change Programme and a member of the board of directors of the Catholic Medical Mission Board, urged the audience at the […]
WHO estimates that the world is short of 12.9 million healthcare workers, and Devi Shetty, the cardiac surgeon and chairman and founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals, thinks that radical steps are needed to provide these workers. Money for healthcare for all will come, he believes, but it cannot be achieved unless healthcare workers are available […]
Physicians and surgeons across Asia, Africa, and Latin America spend their time putting a price tag on human life, said Devi Shetty, cardiac surgeon and chairman and founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals, at the World Summit on Innovation in Heath in Doha last week. His mission is to reduce the costs of health to make […]
Just as I think everybody should have a living will, a plan for their funeral, and clear instructions on whether you want to be buried or cremated, so I advise thinking about your obituary or even obituaries. If you are a doctor you can be sure to get one in The BMJ so long as […]
When journalists arrive in a country at war their learning usually starts with taxi drivers. They see and hear a lot. They know the dark side of life, particularly those who drive at night. I learnt a lot from the taxi driver who picked me up at 5.45 this morning. I was his last job […]