The Intrepid Fenton A few geographical facts: the Northern Territory in Australia is 1.36 million km2. This equates to 5½ times the area of the UK. It contains a population of just 230,000 people of which 130,000 live in Darwin and the surrounding area. It is a vast area with very spread out communities and […]
The BMJ Today: The joys of general practice, the dangers of glyburide, and a clash of care models
• Being a GP is still the best job in the world, writes Margaret McCartney, despite the many problems facing the profession. She notes that GPs witness the life stories of people and their families unfolding in real time, and she finishes with a call to arms for those who are considering general practice: […]
Neel Sharma and Chaoyan Dong: Learning analytics—a potential tool in medical education
Technology utilization in medical training is ubiquitous. As instructors we recognise the fact that no lecture or tutorial is devoid of some form of technology. E-learning and mobile learning has introduced the potential for teaching to take place round the clock, at the convenience of the user. One such example is the highly talked about […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—30 March 2015
NEJM 26 Mar 2015 Vol 372 1193 Is the NEJM preaching Socialism? “We believe that all financial incentives and logistic barriers to providing the least expensive drug, among drugs equivalent in safety and efficacy, should be eliminated so that patients may benefit fully from the results of this Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network trial as […]
The BMJ Today: What airlines can learn about safety from medicine, health coaches from Dunkin’ Donuts, and a seven day NHS?
Blog: The aviation industry needs to address human factors in flight safety “Has the airline industry’s approach to safety been skewed towards the mechanical, technical, and engineering aspects of the aircraft rather than the human factors important to flying?” asks Kallur Suresh, a consultant psychiatrist at North Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, after speculation […]
Ahmed Rashid: Should junior doctors accept pharma support for clinical research training?
Junior clinical researchers know that there’s really only one way for them to comprehensively get on the academic ladder and prove their credibility. Those three letters that contain years of effort and soul searching that make all the difference. The essential and the impossible. The mountain. The PhD. But, of course, once you’ve made the […]
Paul Glasziou: Six proposals for evidence based medicine’s future
This blog is part of a series of blogs linked with BMJ Clinical Evidence, a database of systematic overviews of the best available evidence on the effectiveness of commonly used interventions. Gordon Guyatt coined the term “Evidence based medicine” (EBM) over 20 years ago, and it has had a remarkable global influence. But EBM is […]
Katherine Brown: The UK government’s relationship with the alcohol industry
Concerns have been raised about this government’s relationship with the alcohol industry and the conflict of interest this presents in delivering better public health outcomes. At a time when alcohol related hospital admissions top one million, and the cost of alcohol misuse to the economy exceeds £21bn each year, there is a sense of urgency […]
Kallur Suresh: The aviation industry needs to address human factors in aviation safety
The unspeakable tragedy of the death of 150 people in what is thought to be a deliberate act of pilot suicide over the French Alps has brought into sharp focus the question of mental health of airline pilots. French investigators say that the Germanwings plane was brought down by the co-pilot who locked the pilot out […]
The BMJ Today: Fatal cardiovascular risk in LMICs, indefensible care, and Mission Indradhanush
• A new risk scoring system, as reported in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, has estimated that a higher percentage of people are at a greater risk of fatal cardiovascular disease in low and middle income countries than in high income countries. The Globorisk system, led by researchers Kaveh Hajifathalian and Peter Ueda of the […]