The captain made a mistake. We don’t know why; misjudgement, show boating, foolishness. After hitting the rocks, he seemed to ignore the consequences, delaying action, almost pretending it didn’t happen, and leaving people fend for themselves. Master of a recently built vessel of such scale, he was clearly at the top of his profession having […]
Toby Hillman: Why do doctors get involved in leadership?
There can be a lot of disagreement when it comes to healthcare management and leadership. There are competing views about how far all doctors can be trained to be leaders, and how much impact leadership training can have on clinical outcomes. There are some studies and reports which suggest that organisations with a higher degree of […]
Muir Gray: How doctors working in systems could rescue healthcare
“We have nothing as bad as America’s worst, and nothing as good as America’s best,” wise words said to me by someone many years ago, and this principle has stood the test of time. There are certainly many dreadful things in American healthcare, but there are also wonderful services and excellent innovation with a rigorous […]
Elena Hazelgrove-Planel: Applying for a job as a junior doctor in France
27 October 2010—sitting in a plane taking off from Paris, flicking through the Lonely Planet to Guadeloupe that I had just bought at the airport, I cast my mind over the events of the last year leading me to this departure for a six month post in the French Caribbean… Keen to build on a background of […]
Anita Jolly on the BMJ Group Awards clinical commissioning team of the year
Clinical commissioning team of the year: embracing change to deliver patient care Should it become law later this year, the proposed Health and Social Care Bill will result in significant changes to the way the majority of healthcare services are commissioned in England. Although controversial in nature the bill does represent an opportunity for general […]
Richard Smith: Thoughts on a shoeshining
One of the experiences that has made me think the most in the past week was having my shoes shined in Queretaro, Mexico. It was the lavish care, almost love, that the shoeshiner put into his task that made me think. I was seated in a high, metal chair in bright sunshine in one of […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 23 January 2012
JAMA 18 Jan 2012 Vol 307 265 Cangrelor is one of a number of reversible thienopyridine platelet inhibitors competing to replace clopidogrel. This could be an enormous market, but the BRIDGE study, funded by The Medicines Company, begins with a small niche: patients who discontinue antiplatelet treatment before elective coronary artery bypass grafting. The problem […]
Hannah Bass on healthtalkonline.org
The award-winning experiential health website, healthtalkonline.org, launched a new section devoted to carers of people with a terminal illness on Wednesday. The website’s real life stories are proving a valuable resource not only to patients but also to health professionals. healthtalkonline already hosts thousands of videos of people talking about their experiences of different medical […]
Research highlights – 20 January 2012
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research papers and accompanying articles. […]
David Kerr: TV dinners
Almost every home in the country has one and unlike the background population they have tended to become slimmer and slimmer over recent years. The television set has managed to hold onto its place as the epicentre of home entertainment, despite the assault from the personal computer and the ubiquitous iPod, iPhone, and iPads. One […]