Much has been said about the outcomes of the BMA’s Annual Representatives’ Meeting (ARM) this week. Of the debates held and motions passed, however, perhaps only Tim Crocker-Buqué’s tobacco motion has as strong a claim to world first status as motion 370. Buried in the rather dry sounding section on “Finances of the Association,” this […]
The BMJ Today: Troubling statistics—and calls for sweeping reforms
The BMJ has published some recent statistics that are more than a bit disconcerting. The first set regard corruption. Surely hard to measure, but “best estimates are that between 10% and 25% of global spend on public procurement of health is lost through corruption,” Anita Jain, Samiran Nundy, and Kamran Abbasi write in an Editorial. In […]
Richard Smith: The best doctors and their errors
I’m listening to Sandy Ruddles (not her real name), an ordinary general physician who does some rheumatology, present a case, and I’m feeling some regret at having given up the sacred calling of being a clinician. Oddly, the case Sandy is presenting was disastrous, a catalogue of errors. What impressed me was not Sandy’s knowledge […]
David Wrigley: Privatisation behind an invisibility cloak
I was a guest speaker recently at a packed meeting in central Newcastle, where we discussed and debated the changes to the NHS. Everyone in the room was very concerned and indeed very angry at what they heard. A lot were unaware of the scale of the issue over privatisation in the English NHS. Time […]
The BMJ Today: Sugar the bogeyman and slim boy fat
I stopped adding sugar to my tea when I was a teenager. Up until then (which was sometime in the mid 1970s), I had been wont to fill the cup with several heaped spoonfuls. I regularly covered my morning Weetabix with a glacier of granulated. And I drank a can of Coca-Cola or Pepsi (not […]
Julian Sheather: Torture, medicine, and the need for an independent eye
In August 2012, Claudia was woken at 3:00 in the morning when soldiers burst into her home in Veracruz City, Mexico. They tied her hands and blindfolded her. They took her to the local naval base where they tortured her: they subjected her to repeated electric shocks, then they wrapped her in plastic, and beat […]
Michael Seres: A patient included conference with a difference
Often health events, conferences, and meetings say that they include patients and they do. Well, sort of. They have patients there except they are not really there. The Doctors 2.0 & You conference is different: it really is a patient included conference. What strikes you from the moment it starts is that patients are an integral part […]
The BMJ Today: Whooping cough and getting vaccination right
California is in the grip of a whooping cough epidemic, with 800 cases reported in the first two weeks of June alone. Outbreaks like these are not uncommon in the US. It’s nothing short of “insane,” fumes political blogger Ezra Klein, founder of news site Vox: “These sentences should only exist in musty newspapers from […]
Hugh Alderwick: NHS performance—are we really getting it right?
According to the Commonwealth Fund, in the UK we’re getting it (mostly) right—or, at least, we’re getting it more right than our international counterparts. In their comparative study of health system performance in 11 countries, the UK ranks first across a range of measures covering quality, access, and efficiency of care, while the United States […]
Isobel Braithwaite: Taking bold steps to curb climate change
At the end of May, US President Barack Obama unveiled new power plant standards, which are designed to cut pollution and curb greenhouse gas emissions. He should be applauded for this bold step in the right direction, and even more so for recognising and presenting it to the public as a public health policy, which […]