Richard Thompson and Frank Wells on prescribing rights for retired UK doctors

The proposed introduction by the General Medical Council (GMC) of compulsory detailed assessment of doctors every five years, perhaps starting in November this year, is difficult for those not regularly working in clinical medicine to achieve. This revalidation will be necessary to maintain a licence to practise, and hence prescribe and administer prescription only medicines […]

Read More…

Richard Smith on countering the “wicked problem” of the chronic disease pandemic

I spent two days last week in the seductive grandeur of Trinity College, Oxford, fretting about the global pandemic of chronic disease, but I left feeling optimistic—despite the pandemic raging as fiercely as ever. […]

Read More…

Juliet Walker: BMJ in the news

The timing of organ donation requests and who is making the request may influence a family’s decision to donate a dying relative’s organs. This is the conclusion of a BMJ study. The study found that an organ donation request should not be made at the same time as relatives are told that their relative has […]

Read More…

Richard Smith says make vegetarian food the norm at formal dinners

I’ve just attended a conference on preventing chronic disease, and something that appealed to me greatly was the idea that at all formal dinners (and my how I’ve suffered from formal dinners over the years) the main choice would be vegetarian. You’d have to request meat. The idea came from Susan Jebb, Head of Nutrition […]

Read More…

Juliet Walker: BMJ in the news

A BMJ analysis of using financial incentives to achieve healthy behaviour has stirred a debate in the press this week. News agency AFP wrote that, “Health authorities and corporations are increasingly offering money to people who quit smoking, lose weight or take medicine, despite uncertainty that such incentives work beyond a few months”. The Financial Times […]

Read More…