The third version of the Good Publication Practice guidelines (GPP3) were published last week which makes me a guideline grandmother. Like any grandparent I am excited and proud of my “offspring,” slightly nervous about how the world will treat it, but hopeful that it will grow up to do something useful. And, like a grandmother, I […]
William Cayley: Comfort always and advocacy for the vulnerable
Reading the Monday morning paper, I was greeted by stories about ongoing fights over whether or how to undo the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and controversies over solitary confinement. Later, while driving to work, I heard more news on the challenges facing those in eastern Europe who are confronted by a rising influx of immigrants. One final check […]
Samir Dawlatly: Could general practice survive without the NHS?
General practice is often described as the cornerstone of the NHS. Though its funding doesn’t necessarily reflect this, having its proportion of funding decline in recent years, 90% of all interactions with patients happen in general practice. It is therefore easy to predict that if, for whatever reason, general practice were to collapse or cease […]
Daniel S Goldberg: COI bingo
I am fortunate to possess content expertise on ethics and conflicts-of-interest (“COI”) in medicine and science, and I teach it in a variety of health professional settings. After reading the latest news story on a commercial industry’s partnership with academic scientists, I grew tired enough of seeing the same (to my mind) poor rationalizations for […]
Jim Sherifi: The tyranny of excellence
When one reads the history of any autocratic, despotic regime, one is always struck by how they managed to secure the submission of the educated and intelligent through remarkably simple methods. Doctors in the NHS are currently being subjected to the same tried and trusted processes of indoctrination used by totalitarian regimes. These may be […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Ars magna
In 1545 Girolamo Cardano, an Italian physician, mathematician, and philosopher, published a book, Ars magna, or the Rules of Algebra (picture), which included the solutions to cubic and quartic equations, for which Cardano is perhaps best known today. Rearranging the letters of “ars magna” yields “anagrams”, another 16th century phenomenon, in English at least—the first […]
Neel Sharma and Chaoyan Dong: Coalition in medical education
Trudie Roberts and Ronald Harden authored a commentary earlier this year which focused on enhancing existing collaborations to solve the challenges in medical education. We wanted to share our insights. There is certainly need for improvement as alluded to in Roberts’s and Harden’s article and whilst significant steps have already taken place in this regard, […]
Phillippa Hentsch: A new way of paying for urgent and emergency care services
Different parts of the urgent and emergency care (UEC) pathway are paid for in different ways. Acute and specialist facilities are predominately funded through the national tariff, whereas UEC services offered by mental health and community trusts—such as rapid response, crisis teams, and psychiatry liaison services—are paid predominately through block contracts. For commissioners and providers […]
Lara Gautier: August 2015—a paroxysm of environmental health incidents caused by industrial activity
The Animas river in Colorado, the Moskva river south of Moscow, and Tianjin. What do these three geographic areas have in common? They have all been deeply affected by industrial hazards in August 2015. 5 August: In Colorado, agents from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accidentally unleashed 3m gallons of toxic mine waste into the […]
Amy Price: BMJ and the Twitter Footprint
Recently on Twitter I saw a beautiful network graph with my name in it showcasing the reach of a doctor on Twitter. It was amazing to see the reach of just a few small words. I asked the scientist, Wasim Ahmed if he would consider creating a network graph for the key word “BMJ.” These maps […]