March is Women’s History Month in the US, UK, and Australia. 8 March was International Women’s Day everywhere. There are more women prime ministers, presidents, CEOs, and leaders than ever before. More women than men attend college in the US, and since 2008 women have completed the majority of doctoral degrees. However, for all of […]
Category: US healthcare
The BMJ Today: Cigarettes and alcohol
“My earliest ambition was to be an engineer, because someone told me girls couldn’t be engineers,” says Glasgow based GP Margaret McCartney in BMJ Confidential. It’s this tenacious attitude that has characterised Margaret’s career, from her day to day work as a GP in Glasgow, to her tireless defence of the ethics and values of […]
Simon Chapman: Will vapers really “quit and (not) die?”
The public health appeal of vaping that emboldens its advocates to sanctimoniously taunt anyone unconvinced by their evangelism as callous “quit or die” moralists is that e-cigarettes are spectacularly promising as a way of quitting smoking. Aware that many vapers also continue to smoke, they point to the seemingly undeniable logic of “every cigarette forgone […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—17 March 2014
NEJM 13 Mar 2014 Vol 370 1029 Doctors, by and large, make bad scientists. We train our minds for years in some of the hardest intellectual disciplines, and then make do with the sloppiest excuse for thought when it comes to believing what we wish to. All of us learned, at some time between the […]
The BMJ Today: Statins in the headlines again
Statins have been featuring in the news fairly regularly of late. Last week they made the headlines again when a systematic review of side effects in placebo-controlled trials of statins was published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. “Statins ‘have no side effects’” read the front page of The Daily Telegraph. But as Jacqui […]
Simon Chapman on e-cigarettes: the best and the worst case scenarios for public health
Use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigs or Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems—ENDS) is showing exponential increase in some nations. Their regular use remains marginal in Australia, where the sale of nicotine liquid is banned (personal imports are legal only if the importer needs nicotine for therapeutic purposes—including to assist with the cessation of smoking. Legal importation of […]
The BMJ Today: One portion of broccoli and hummous to go
Do you ever stop off for a burger or a slice of pizza on your way home from work? And if the takeaway had organic broccoli spears and a hummous dip on the menu, would you go for the healthier option instead? […]
The BMJ Today: Surgery in a war zone
“Nothing else comes close to the enjoyment of being able to help people in a war zone,” says London based vascular surgeon David Nott in BMJ Confidential. For two decades he has taken around six weeks, unpaid leave almost every year to provide help and to train doctors in war zones, starting in Sarajevo in […]
Robin E Moulder: The role of patient engagement in error prevention
Imagine being told you have a devastating illness, only to find out months later it was a mistake? Medical diagnostic errors are profoundly damaging to the patient, the clinician, and the healthcare system. Yet, as we know, human error is a reality in our clinical practice. My grandfather had a saying when it came to […]
The BMJ Today: Mammography wars and other conflicts
Anyone who questions the value of breast screening programmes must still feel a bit like Galileo did when he championed heliocentrism. To many people, including parts of the medical establishment, it seems counterintuitive to suggest that mammography might not be that effective and could lead to overdiagnosis. The evidence might be building, but it still […]