Forget the Man Booker prize, that’s over for another year. Instead medico-literary eyes are on a £25k prize set to be awarded by a well-endowed medical charity next month. The Wellcome Trust Book Award, which aims to celebrate medicine in literature, has just announced its 2010 shortlist for works of fiction or non-fiction on the […]
Martin Carroll on clean water and sanitation: leaders must walk the walk, talk the talk
We often refer to water as “the stuff of life.” Without water, our cells would shrivel and die, our brain function would be progressively impaired, and we would eventually find it impossible to expel harmful toxins. The same applies to the world around us – the “global skin” in which we live. Without clean water […]
Research highlights – 15 October 2010
“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. […]
Chris Ham: Join the debate over the future of NHS managers
Today, The King’s Fund launches a new commission on leadership and management in the NHS. The NHS is a complex organisation employing more than 1 million people and spending more than £100 billion. It is a system that requires sound management – rather than traditional administration – and leadership at every level. […]
Andrew Mitchell: The choice for women
In the past 24 hours, 980 women will have died in pregnancy and childbirth. The risk of a woman in the UK dying from maternal causes is only 1 in 8,200 during her lifetime. In Sierra Leone, that risk becomes 1 in 8. […]
Julian Sheather: When patients become the enemy
I was out with a friend recently, a GP. He works in an inner-city practice. By all accounts he is a good GP. As a mate I know him to be passionate, hard working, and committed. He is bright, with interests that range way beyond medicine. I got to know him when he was a […]
Neil Graham: Don’t underestimate your audience, science journalists
Reading science blogger Martin Robbins’ meticulously observed, not to mention witty article “This is a news website article about a scientific paper“, I was overcome by a warm, fraternal feeling. It seems that I’m not the only person to have been infuriated by the difficulty regularly experienced in trying to navigate from the coverage of a scientific […]
Colin Ball: It’s a miracle
Our story starts in March 2006. Tayler Bequest Hospital is a beautiful looking building with a Cape Dutch exterior that concealed the true awfulness of what was seen there every day. When I arrived at 8am, a long queue already snaked out into the car park. People waited all day, most with HIV/AIDS related complications. The children’s […]
Paivi Hietanen on being a stranger at the BMJ
Observations by the editor of the Finnish Medical Journal (FMJ) When leaving Helsinki I had ambiguous feelings. Two books from my childhood came to mind, The Bear Who Always Said “No” and Turre, The Ship Dog. The bear was thrown out of his home and his subsequent lonely journey through foreign villages inhabited by unfriendly […]
Desmond O’Neill: Social networking, telemedicine, and stroke
Some medical technologies creep up on you, some arrive with a bang. In internal medicine much of the change – electronic laboratory reporting, digital imaging – is gradualist and steered by other disciplines, and physicians are grateful if relatively passive users. On the other hand, telemedicine for stroke thrombolysis was a radical step for both […]