Hospitals can be dangerous places. Two things happen to everyone admitted to hospital for more than a few hours—they are put to bed and are fed. Over half a century […]
Columnists
Desmond O’Neill: Aiming to lose
Working as a doctor in Ireland has many positive aspects, particularly a warm human ambience and a remarkable love of the spoken word. On the debit side of the linguistic […]
Richard Smith: A bad bad week for access
I was once the editor of the BMJ and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. I work for a $100 billion company. I’m an unpaid professor at both Warwick […]
Edzard Ernst: The “integrated medicine” straw-man
Proponents of integrated medicine want us to believe that they are offering “the best of both worlds” to their patients and claim that using a combination of alternative plus conventional […]
Richard Smith: What I learnt about non-communicable disease in one afternoon
Most of my work is concerned with non-communicable disease (NCD) in low and middle income countries, so I’ve got to know a fair bit about the subject. But yesterday I […]
Pritpal S Tamber: Evidence and the real world
There is a lot of angst around why research evidence takes so long to penetrate routine clinical practice. My view is that it’s a miracle that any of it makes […]
Martin McShane: Walk the talk
Sometimes, it becomes apparent that what we have been talking about for so long is actually beginning to happen. Over the last few weeks we have been preparing for our […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Implementation research evidence uptake and use for policy making
For the last two years I have worked on a project about implementation research with more than 120 colleagues from across the globe: India, Chile, Mexico, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Uganda […]
Richard Smith: A way to provide palliative care globally
Palliative care globally lacks funding, professionals, and medicines (particularly morphine) and suffers from policy neglect, said David Praill, chief executive of Help the Hospices, opening a meeting in London on […]
Pritpal S Tamber: Soft-wiring knowledge
Knowing when and how to apply established knowledge into practice is difficult. A recent article in The Lancet shows why. The thickness of the inner walls of the carotid artery […]