It is a sure sign of the ever diminishing pool of memorable acronyms that even the most treasured of ceremonial events can be hijacked for the basest of clinical motives. In recent years, a prominent casualty was one of the highlights of the British cultural summer, the Proms. Rather than a magnificent series of concerts […]
Deborah Cohen on improving health reporting
There are a few ways to improve health reporting. One is doing as some science commentators do: lumping all journalists together in a totally “unscientific” way sniping and sneering to their pals on the blogosphere. Or you can explain how to cover medical research by offering advice about how to approach a story that your […]
Research highlights – 22 July 2011
“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. […]
Richard Smith: In the goldfish bowl with GPs—part 2
In my last blog I described my time in a goldfish bowl with some 35 GPs on a leadership course—how the process worked, and what I learnt about myself, and how GPs think about me. But what I really meant to describe was our discussion on commissioning, how to do it well. In particular, I […]
Grania Brigden: Capreomycin shortage – symptom of a bigger problem in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis
Of the 9.4 million new tuberculosis (TB) cases diagnosed each year, approximately 5% are multidrug resistant (MDR). MDR-TB treatment is demanding for patients, requiring a complex treatment course lasting 18–24 months, and using a minimum of five different antibiotics that often add up to more than 20 tablets a day. […]
Behrooz Astaneh: Authorship criteria – use or abuse
A recent post on WAME forum about authorship criteria shows that it is still a challenge, even though standard guidelines were released a few years ago by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (Vancouver group). The responses to the post on the WAME forum triggered me to write this blog. The case described was of 5 surgeons who […]
David Pencheon: Solidarity? When mass (in)action is bad.
When good people do too little, bad things happen. Or: beware death by omission as much as death by commission. Prizes avaliable if you know the heritage of the original quotations. […]
James Raftery: The NHS top-up policy for drugs not recommended by NICE – challenging the limits?
A recent breakfast meeting at the Kings Fund discussed the issue of an NHS top-up policy in relation to multifocal lenses in cataract surgery. My contribution from the commissioner perspective involved six points: i) the lenses were dear, adding several hundred pounds to the around £800 NHS cost of a cataract procedure, ii) that they were highly […]
Richard Smith: In the goldfish bowl with GPs
Two weeks ago I spent 90 minutes in a goldfish bowl with about 30 GPs. The goldfish bowl is a process to encourage reflection, and it certainly caused me to reflect. The goldfish bowl features in the leadership course of the Royal General College of Practitioners. Somebody with some pretensions to having been a leader […]
Sarah Walpole, Jerome Baddley, and Rachel Stancliffe: Lost in transition
Much has been hypothesised, debated, and advocated about NHS reform. Specialists in a range of areas have looked at the impacts on their particular area of work, yet little has been remarked about the impacts of the transition on one of the NHS’s core duties – sustainability. Rising natural resource costs, climate change, and legal […]