Doctors in Ireland must be breathing a sigh of relief after judges ruled that a brain dead pregnant woman should be allowed to die. The case makes for grim reading. The woman, in her late 20s and 18 weeks pregnant, was declared clinically dead on 3 December after a fall. But doctors refused to comply […]
Category: The BMJ today
The BMJ Today: Parkinson’s disease, broken noses, and the diet wars
Pressure on emergency departments reaches its peak during the winter months, and the festive period puts the cherry on the Christmas cake. Data published last week show that the percentage of patients seen in English emergency departments within four hours was the lowest since records began in 2010 (<90%). In addition to the predicted winter […]
The BMJ Today: All I want for Christmas is . . . brussel sprouts
‘Twas the Monday before Christmas and all through BMA house, Not an editor was typing, nor clicking a mouse. The Christmas issue already hung on the website with care, In hopes festive doctors soon would look there. And a feast of Yuletide delights awaits you. So . . . Banish all thoughts of diets until […]
The BMJ Today: Hidden holiday horrors
Are you ready to switch off the email and settle into some quiet time with family? Switch on the old classic cartoons for the kids and permit them an extra hour of late night Nintendo? The holidays—a time of extra kindness and compassion, a time of safety and comfort, a time when doing good just […]
The BMJ Today: All I want for Christmas is a chocolate Aneurin Bevan
In the past year you may have read BMJ Confidential, the weekly column that grills healthcare professionals on their backgrounds and inspiration, earliest ambitions, career mistakes, and guilty pleasures. For The BMJ’s bumper Christmas issue Nigel Hawkes has reviewed the first 50 editions of this probing column, and a round-up of his findings is published […]
The BMJ Today: Why diets don’t work and the rehabilitation of saturated fat
Depending on your world view, our obsession with food at Christmas (witness packed supermarket aisles, and the acres of menu ideas churned out by newspapers) is either a glorious, well deserved indulgence or evidence of an obscene festival of gluttony. Come January many of us will have embarked on body sculpting diets. Before you do, […]
The BMJ Today: “Your husband can donate his tools” and other Christmas highlights
What do you do if you have to treat a very sick child in intensive care whose parents do not speak English—and there are no human translators available? What do you do when presented with any seemingly insoluble situation in this day and age? Naturally, your first port of call is Google. But can you […]
The BMJ Today: Idiotic men and socialism
No, that isn’t the latest political outpouring from Russell Brand—it’s the theme of two recently published papers in The BMJ. Authors in Australia wanted to find out if the meme “armchair socialist” held any weight. You know the type—those people who tweet with fervour from their sofas during Question Time, but seem to be fully […]
The BMJ Today: Christmas has hit the fan
We’re getting festive in BMJ Towers, mince pies, tinsel, and dubious jumper choices abound. So settle back and let the Christmas issue relax you like a postprandial sherry. What makes a good playlist? This is a much more complicated question than I had first suspected, and some strong opinions were expressed by colleagues. (Most militantly […]
The BMJ Today: Is the private sector closing in on the NHS?
Yesterday, an investigation from The BMJ was making headlines everywhere from the BBC and the Financial Times, to Rochdale Online. This investigation, the latest by The BMJ‘s news reporter Gareth Iacobucci, found that since the Health and Social Care Act came into force in April 2013, a third of NHS contracts have gone to private sector providers. […]