Most of us end up with a handful of people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives. I’ve been lucky to have had dozens of memorable teachers, and one of the first was Miss Molineux. Miss Molineux was young, enthusiastic, and kind. We were not […]
The BMJ Today: The glass ceiling, upcoming elections, and big tobacco
As I look around our open plan office, towards where our editor, Fiona Godlee, sits, it would seem that the glass ceiling has been shattered at The BMJ. But, in her personal view, Medicine still needs feminism, Helena Watson argues that there are “legions of feminist issues still left to fight.” […]
The BMJ Today: If you hear hoof beats in Texas think of horses, not zebras
As Saurabh Jha writes, “The likelihood that someone with cerebral aneurysm hit by a bat develops subarachnoid hemorrhage (near certainty) is not the same as the likelihood that someone who develops subarachnoid hemorrhage after high impact trauma has an aneurysm, hitherto undisclosed (very low).” But would you order tests so you could absolutely rule it […]
Desmond O’Neill: Combatting rigidity in medicine
High quality films for children have a special place in our cultural landscape, an appeal which even embraces the medical humanities. To reach beyond children to the adults in their entourage requires a sure touch for tapping into the universal across the lifespan. In addition, many of the underlying fables are vehicles for deep and […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—7 April 2014
NEJM 3 Apr 2014 Vol 370 1287 Multitarget stool testing, you will be pleased to hear, is not the most important topic in the NEJM this week. There is in fact so much else on the NEJM website that I could take up the whole review dealing with nothing but online papers. So let us […]
The BMJ Today: The climate change horse has bolted
Eric Chivian urges doctors to help tackle climate change, but shouldn’t the profession’s energies be spent tackling unsafe hospitals and under resourced healthcare systems? […]
Richard Smith: Rediscovering a BMJ gem
After a class I taught recently one of the students came up to me and said, “My mother was fond of you. Her name was Clare Vaughan.” I remembered. I met Clare only once, shortly before she died in July 1996 in her early 40s. My memory of the meeting is hazy: I remember beauty, […]
Vidhya Alakeson: What will personal health budgets offer the NHS?
From this month, adults and children eligible for continuing healthcare will have the right to ask for a personal health budget. Five years on from the start of the national personal health budget pilot, awareness among doctors of this new approach remains low, and scepticism at times, high. But rather than being seen as something […]
Hemal Kanzaria et al: How can we reduce medical waste in US hospitals?
US hospitals annually discard millions of dollars of clean, unused medical equipment due to procedural excess or federal regulations. [1,2] Many health professional students do not recognise the magnitude of this waste or the extent of worldwide inequities in access to such supplies. In an era of value driven care, it is critical to engage […]
The BMJ Today: Is medicine marching towards an era of greater openness?
In the latest Endgames picture quiz, a 41 year old man presents to the emergency department with a two week history of worsening shortness of breath, productive cough, intermittent fever, night sweats, and non-pleuritic pain in the right side of the chest wall. He was diagnosed with a pulmonary abcess secondary to community acquired pneumonia. […]