What is a good clinical teacher? Asked to host an awards ceremony, I have been thinking about it. At the BMJ we focus on “Helping doctors make better decisions” and in the education section we produce great content. That’s the easy part. Teaching is much more than reproducing this content. Its about passing on knowledge […]
Liz Wager: What is the UK’s framework for research integrity?
An item in The Lancet last week (Godecharle et al. Lancet 2013;381:10097-8) bemoans the lack of a regulatory framework for research integrity in Europe. The confusion is neatly illustrated by a map categorising countries by how they handle misconduct. The UK falls into the second best category, along with Germany and Sweden, of countries that […]
David Lock: “Privatisation regulations” mean big change
It is not every day that the Department of Health produces a formal response to two of my dry (and I accept potentially fairly boring) legal opinions. 23 March was a red letter day because it was the first time it has happened. The department produced a formal response to material I and my fellow barrister, Ligia […]
Kailash Chand: Withdraw section 75 regulations
Last month the UK government released its amended regulations on NHS procurement after considerable outrage from health organisations, trade unions, and parliamentarians, over what appeared to be clear breaches of agreements. Is it a merely a cosmetic re-write of regulation 75 again that seeks merely to better disguise the true privatising aim of these regulations, or […]
Saurabh Gupta: Are doctors perpetual soft targets?
I recently read an article about a study in the US journal Demography on skewed sex ratios prevalent in India among the children of doctors. It mentioned that out of a sample of doctor couples (946 nuclear families with 1,624 children), the child sex ratio was 907 girls per 1 000 boys. This is below the Indian […]
Desmond O’Neill: Fresh approaches to long term care medicine in Washington, DC
Washington in spring is a visual treat, the spectacular arrays of cherry trees in bloom adding a frothy filigree to the sober magnificence of the iconic National Mall. Throw in blue skies and crisp spring weather, and it is not surprising that crowds flock to its Cherry Blossom Festival at weekends in March and April. […]
Richard Smith: Should the first priority of the NHS be to stop us dying or to help us die well?
Good Friday is an excellent day for thinking about death, but I think about death every day. I find it energising. As I write this blog on Easter Sunday, I read that Bruce Keogh, the medical director of NHS England, thinks that the first priority if the NHS is to stop us dying. Minutes after reading […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Research misconduct, actually
This month the open access journal with the highest impact factor: PLoS Med (short for Public Library of Science Medicine) will publish a set of articles on research misconduct. The main articles are broken down into research misconduct in high-income countries and research misconduct in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). I am second author […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—2 April 2013
JAMA 27 Mar 2013 Vol 309 1241 Have you ever heard of someone who’s recently had a heart attack going off and having 40 infusions of disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, ascorbate, B vitamins, electrolytes, procaine and heparin? No, I hadn’t either, until I went to give a talk to some cardiac rehabilitation patients about 12 years […]
David Lock: A new and very different type of NHS in England
April 1 2013 saw the launch of a very different type of NHS in England. The current government has grappled with the same problems as all previous governments, but imposed radical surgery on an ageing patient. The previous government struggled with the problem of getting improved productivity and common high standards out of a largely […]