The landmark documentary Broadmoor aired on ITV on Wednesday 5 and 12 November. For the first time, the NHS allowed a camera crew into a high secure psychiatric hospital to film the lives of patients and staff. One of the biggest challenges of being clinical director of Broadmoor Hospital is changing the public perception of […]
John Illman: Richard Asher exhibition at the RSM
An exhibition celebrating Richard Asher (1912-69), perhaps the greatest medical wordsmith of his generation, opened last week at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. Asher was acclaimed as a superb diagnostician, as well as for his clarity and wit in both the spoken and written word. His 1947 paper in The BMJ, The Dangers of […]
The BMJ Today: Fat—the word that dare not speak its name in The BMJ?
One of The BMJ articles trending today is our outspoken weekly columnist Margaret McCartney’s latest piece, which takes to task recent critics of overweight NHS staff. Sally Davies and Simon Stevens, you know who you are. The headline, “Fat doctors are patients too,” was queried by The BMJ duty editor yesterday. He questioned if “fat” […]
David Oliver: The media narrative on quality in healthcare—helpful or harmful?
On 28 October, I was part of a Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust “Quality Watch” panel, speaking on the media representation of quality in healthcare. Truth be told, I had been on call for four straight days, then that morning my ward doctor had gone off sick, and it had been touch and go as […]
Grania Brigden: Mind the deadly gaps in the TB response
The 45th Union World Conference on Lung Health, recently held in Barcelona, opened with the health ministers of South Africa and India making bold commitments to address and reverse the tuberculosis epidemics in their countries. Five other countries also committed to ending TB, resulting in the birth of the Barcelona Declaration on TB. This political commitment […]
The BMJ Today: Talking about the harms of IV fluids
I recall grillings about intravenous (IV) fluids and the compartments of the body as a very junior doctor. Confidence in prescribing the right fluid, at the right rate at the right time, with or without added potassium, seemed to be the mark of a registrar. Amid the anxiety provoked by on-call ward cover—a stack of […]
The Ebola diaries—10 November 2014
If you had asked any of us about our plans for November 2014, it probably would not have included a tour to Sierra Leone to treat patients with Ebola. But here we are: eight British army and navy doctors, sweating in the heat and the humidity of a west African afternoon, waiting for the President […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—10 November 2014
NEJM 6 November 2014 Vol 371 1771 The first paper in the New England Journal this week describes a French trial of rituximab versus azathioprine for maintenance in ANCA associated vasculitis. “At month 28, major relapse had occurred in 17 patients in the azathioprine group (29%) and in 3 patients in the rituximab group (5%) […]
The BMJ Today: A US unprepared for Ebola, fat doctors, and stiff upper lips
“Misinformation and conflicting messages have led to panic about contagion among the public,” writes The BMJ’s US clinical research editor, José G Merino, in our latest editorial on Ebola, which considers the response to the outbreak in the United States. Four cases in the country, he writes, have “led to overreaction and unjustified fear . […]
Paul Wicks: Patients at the heart of quality of life research
“It seems to me,” said Parkinson’s patient and activist Jon Stamford, “that ‘quality of life’ is when you tell me what’s missing in my life. That seems to me to be rather odd.” This polite but piercing insight was shared on stage in 2012 at the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) in […]