Faced with a gerontology conference with 30 parallel sessions over five days, the texting argot of teenagers comes in handy. To LOL and YOLO has been added FOMO: Fear of […]
Columnists
Neal Maskrey: Treating the patient and not the disease
It was the biggest turnout for many a year. In our small coastal town in the north west of England, 5000 of us stood together bare headed for an hour on […]
The BMJ Today: How can doctors learn about research?
In my previous role at The BMJ, I had the chance to work on Endgames, whose educational content is aimed at helping junior doctors in the UK and around the […]
David Oliver: The media narrative on quality in healthcare—helpful or harmful?
On 28 October, I was part of a Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust “Quality Watch” panel, speaking on the media representation of quality in healthcare. Truth be told, I had […]
Richard Smith: No case for retracting Lancet’s Gaza letter
In 1973 about 280 000 scientific articles were published, but there were no retractions. When I became an editor in 1979, retractions were rare and of little interest to anybody. […]
William Cayley: Social history on the back roads
Social context and relationships may shape what drives our patients, but sometimes the best way to ponder these is on a drive! En route to a home visit today, I […]
William Cayley: Overdiagnosis, uncertainty, and epistemology
Many thanks to Anita Jain for reporting on the “Overdiagnosis” session at the Cochrane Colloquium—I wish I could have been there. The suspicion that overdiagnosis (or at least over testing) […]
Richard Smith: Leapfrogging to universal health coverage
Low and middle income countries have the chance to create health systems that will perform much better than those in high income countries. Copying health systems that look increasingly unsustainable […]
The BMJ Today: The joys and snags of being a GP
As a GP who didn’t train in the UK and who has never worked in the country as a GP, I follow the situation of general practice in the UK […]
William Cayley: Social history consultations and patient time vs patient time
Who are you, what do you need, and how do I figure out how to care for you? Fundamentally, those are the questions that drive every encounter between a doctor […]