Our story begins on a warm humid day in a rural village in Andhra Pradesh, India. Our team of six doctors, nurses, and medical students arrived with a mobile health bus to run a community clinic. As the patients rolled in and out of the clinic at a remarkably quick pace, I remember one patient* that […]
The BMJ Today: Guidelines—comfort in a sea of uncertainty?
We’ve just published two more summaries of recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. We hope that these help our busy clinician readers get to grips fast with current best practice, especially where uncertainty or controversy exists. Both these summaries cover the latest you should know on diagnosis and management; one concerns […]
Julie Browne: A delicate power balance—teachers and learners in medical education
By the time I taught my first medical students, I was already an experienced schoolteacher and well used to frank, and occasionally uninhibited, feedback on my performance from my young students. There was Elliot, who, if he wasn’t allowed to run about the classroom, could often be found fast asleep under a desk; Izzy, who […]
Richard Smith: A tobacco company CEO writes to his marketing department
Dear all, I see a great opportunity for us. You won’t believe this, but I’m at a public health conference in Sousse in Tunisia. I’ve come with my twin brother, a professor of public health. I am, of course, incognito. My brother asked me—yes, asked me—to come. Despite what you might think, we agree on […]
The BMJ Today: Honey, I shrunk the health service
If the blistering analysis article posted today on thebmj.com is correct, then foundation trusts (FTs) need to prepare for a cut in the NHS funded services they are legally obliged to provide. This reduction in “mandatory” core services could come as soon as 2016 for some FTs. It matters, say the authors, because the fewer […]
William Cayley: Thinking about Ebola from the sidelines
Recently I was staring at two dramatically different bits of “news” on my computer screen. Yet another story on the spreading Ebola outbreak was in one window, and the latest update on our practice’s clinical performance metrics was in the next window. News of an out of control plague, juxtaposed with little red and green numbers […]
Tom Jefferson: EMA’s release of regulatory data—trust but verify
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has now released the final version of its policy on the prospective release of clinical reports of trials, which are submitted by sponsors to support marketing authorisation applications (MAAs). The agency has said that it will—at a future date—determine how to release individual participant data (IPD). Scope The policy—to become effective from 1 January […]
The BMJ Today: Climate change and conflicts of interest: the sound and the fury
“Fury as top medical journal joins the green bandwagon” fumed the Daily Mail last week, which took exception to The BMJ’s publication of an article that, in the words of editor in chief Fiona Godlee, was not medicine or health but “pure climate science.” “In this unequal battle with big business and political inertia we have […]
Desmond O’Neill: Sky disc and the marvel of ageing
One of the great challenges of hospital medicine is retaining a sense of the marvel of ageing after a busy night on general take. The sheer complexity of the frail, multimorbid, and delirious nonagenarian can easily rattle junior trainees. Seeing beyond the losses to the accumulated richness of life experiences demands insight, but can be […]
Tony Waterston and Jean Bowyer: Teaching and learning about disability in the West Bank
“We want to improve the attitudes of nurses towards their patients.” This call from senior nurses at an Educating of Educators course in Ramallah (a Palestinian city in the central West Bank) could have been echoed in any country in the world, but these nurses are determined to bring about change and have the capacity […]