Attending to the health secretary’s recent pronouncements and politicking around the state of the NHS, I find myself reflecting on rather striking parallels with the propagandising that preceded the 2003 […]
Month: July 2013
Desmond O’Neill: A tale of three cities—geriatric medicine in Australia
Some minds improve by travel, wrote the nineteenth century poet and humorist, Thomas Hood: others, rather, resemble copper wire, or brass, which get the narrower by going farther. And so […]
Krishna Chinthapalli: The great consultant mortality rate experiment—part 2
Read part one of this blog here. Bad outcomes Ben Bridgewater thinks there are three main reasons why some consultants have opted out of reporting outcomes: data quality, risk adjustment, […]
Krishna Chinthapalli: The great consultant mortality rate experiment—part 1
An ugly outcome In the early hours of Friday 28 June, a surgeon lay awake with worry. Finally he decided to go into hospital to catch up with his paperwork […]
Readers’ editor: Influence beyond the impact factor
The BMJ’s impact and influence should be measured by more than just established metrics such as impact factor. But the new figures, released two weeks ago, are very welcome. The journal’s impact factor rose more […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Are there any aspects of healthcare about which you are passionate?
Health inequality. As an editor, we see lots of papers on health inequality; an anodyne, antiseptic term that trips off the tongue without baggage. Not much new. But, in practice […]
Sandeep Kumar Panigrahi: The annual health survey in India
The Annual Health Survey (AHS), conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in collaboration with the register general of India, has proved to be a major breakthrough for […]
Rachel Stancliffe and Mahmood Bhutta: Should doctors lead on sustainability?
Welcome to a new series of blogs on sustainable healthcare that will look at health, sustainability and the interplay between the two. The blog will share ideas from experts […]
Richard Smith: Menstrual regulation and the sacra rosa—escaping religious rigidity
Countries that are strongly Muslim or Roman Catholic find abortion unacceptable, but Bangladesh, a Muslim country, has found a clever way of helping women who might be pregnant and don’t […]
Liz Wager: Trouble with retractions
Retracting unreliable publications can cause headaches for journal editors and a recent case illustrates why they can be so tricky. According to reports in the BMJ and Nature, the drug […]