Here is my personal selection of what is new on The BMJ today: Head to Head • Is a smoking ban in UK parks and outdoor spaces a good idea? In this topical debate, Ara Darzi and Oliver P Keown call for a ban to help smokers quit and to protect children from seeing people […]
Category: The BMJ today
The BMJ Today: The perils of whistleblowing and the Russian roulette of NHS management
Here’s a flavour of what’s new on thebmj.com today. Features • Why would a hospital consultant go into management? Taking the job of NHS trust chief executive requires a doctor to ditch job security, probably earn less money, and be saddled with problems they don’t have the power to solve, finds Richard Vize. Dr Mark Newbold, […]
The BMJ Today: Women’s satisfaction with pain relief during labour
Good morning. Here’s what is new in The BMJ. Research • Analgesics in labour. Are women more satisfied with pain relief obtained through a patient controlled device delivering remifentanil or epidural analgesia? Dutch researchers report on a head to head randomised trial comparing the two treatments. News • Avoidable deaths. Improper monitoring and other errors […]
The BMJ Today: Expanding, limiting, and personalising healthcare
Research • Does early discharge increase the risk of complications and death? A cohort study from Sweden in patients over 50 with hip fracture found an increased risk of death in patients who stayed in hospital for 10 days or fewer. • Expanding coverage of health insurance in Massachusetts increased access to knee and hip […]
The BMJ Today: Tuberculosis, technology, and the art of good communication
News • Andrew Dowson, director of headache services at King’s College Hospital, London, has been suspended from the UK medical register for four months for a “serious breach of professional standards” during the conduct of a clinical trial to test whether a new device for closing patent foramen ovale could cure migraine. • A study from […]
The BMJ Today: Salty sputum and self dialysis for Swedes
Research What are the long term effects of multidisciplinary biopsychosocial rehabilitation for patients with chronic low back pain? News • Chicago born Frances Glessner Lee (pictured), the “mother of CSI” and dollhouse-style dioramas, features in “Forensics: the anatomy of crime” exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London. • The 2015 version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans […]
The BMJ Today: Latest news on statins data and the UK government comes under fire (again)
News Statins: The Cholesterol Treatment Trials Collaboration plans to produce tabulated results of all side effects recorded in 30 randomised controlled trials of statins by the end of this year. Rory Collins, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Oxford, does not expect the results to “alter the evidence,” which he says strongly favours […]
The BMJ Today: FGM, GULP, and #NoMoreGames
ANALYSIS Too much technology: The BMJ’s overdiagnosis theme begins today with Bjørn Morten Hofmann, who argues that we are medicalising ordinary human conditions, and we need to rethink our reflex use of health technology. […]
The BMJ Today: Sugar, HRT, and a neonate with a rash
• There are a number of responses to The BMJ’s latest investigation into links between public health scientists and food companies. Michelle Harvie and Louise Gorman say, “Industry funding is an inevitable consequence of limited government research funds. In addition it is useful for academia to link with industry as this allows research findings to […]
The BMJ Today: Sugar—a bittersweet topic
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, writing this blog is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get. This Friday the 13th, I get sugar, a bitter sweet topic for someone whose mother has been sucrose-free for a quarter century, whereas I’m more like Forrest, I could eat a million and a […]