Martin Mckee, a prominent public health academic and a prolific writer for The BMJ, is featured this week in the always entertaining BMJ Confidential. As professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, his work has had worldwide impact. He is constantly travelling around the world because of his work, […]
Category: The BMJ today
The BMJ Today: We may need more GPs, but where will they come from?
Integrating health and social care is Labour’s main objective for the NHS, Gareth Iacobbuci reports in The BMJ today. Labour has also reiterated its plan to train and hire more doctors, nurses, care workers, and midwives, paid for by £2.5bn raised through cracking down on tax avoidance, the “mansion tax,” and a levy on tobacco […]
The BMJ Today: Learning new lessons from the young
In a week when the first successful organ donation from a newborn was carried out in the UK, The BMJ seems to also be learning new lessons from the youngest in our society. The latest State Of The Art (SOTA) review by Eugene Chang discusses the increase in preterm birth rates worldwide (11.1% of all […]
The BMJ Today: Managing multimorbidity in a monomorbid world
The good news is that life expectancy is increasing around the world and we are all living longer. The less good news is that as we get older, we are acquiring a growing number of chronic diseases. Multimorbidity—defined as the presence of two or more conditions in an individual—is increasingly common. It presents a number […]
The BMJ Today: Trust me, I’m a patient
Michel Foucault had much to say—mostly critical—about medicine. But the rarity of any mention of his name in medical journals tells me that medicine has had far less to say about him, perhaps unsurprisingly. Why engage with a philosopher, especially one who suggested in no indirect terms that medicine was inherently political, that the medical […]
The BMJ Today: Hinchingbrooke, Circle, and tabloid smears
The recent news that England’s first privately run NHS hospital was to be placed into “special measures” by healthcare regulator the Care Quality Commission has sparked a fierce and rather ugly political debate. As The BMJ first reported on 12 January, Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust in Cambridgeshire—managed by Circle Healthcare—was subject to the action […]
The BMJ Today: Should I prescribe anti-virals to prevent flu for nursing home patients?
A news story last week reported scepticism about whether GPs should prescribe anti-viral neuraminidase inhibitors osteltamivir and zanamivir to prevent flu in nursing home patients. Yesterday afternoon, another news story said that some GPs feel pressured by Public Health England to do so. The chair of the BMA’s General Practitioner’s Committee’s Clinical and Prescribing Subcommittee, Andrew Green, […]
The BMJ Today: Management consultants are like Marmite
“It must be comforting to live in a Manichaean world where management consultants are devils and doctors are angels,” posted Stephen Black, a confessed management consultant for a “major management consulting firm that often works for the NHS,” on thebmj.com yesterday. “It makes solving the many problems of the NHS so easy.” He was responding to […]
The BMJ Today: Rabies, stroke, and screening
Rabies is a neglected tropical disease that predominantly affects the most vulnerable humans—children living in the most disadvantaged areas of the poorest countries. Many countries have successfully reduced the impact of the disease by tackling the gap between public and animal health through a concerted “one health” approach. […]
The BMJ Today: Raising funds for the fight against Ebola
After a hiatus of more than 18 months, blogger Sandra Lako provides an update from Sierra Leone, where she has been working for the past nine years, improving access to and quality of healthcare for women and children. “A year ago I would not have believed anyone who told me that I would be in […]