The department of personnel in Rajasthan, a state in India, has taken a bold step by making it mandatory for candidates who want a government job to commit to not […]
Month: January 2014
Robyn Evans: A crucial time for global surgery
Mid morning on Saturday 18 January, in a dark, slightly indie London theatre, a crowd of distinguished surgery and anaesthesia colleagues gathered to eat Mexican food and talk safe surgery. […]
Richard Smith: Medical research—still a scandal
Twenty years ago this week the statistician Doug Altman published an editorial in the BMJ arguing that much medical research was of poor quality and misleading. In his editorial entitled, […]
Suchita Shah: Why are pharmacies in Massachusetts selling tobacco?
In the wake of the 50th US Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health, published last week, and in the spirit of Lewis Carroll, whose birthday it was this week, […]
Readers’ editor: Is the term “Chinese wall” racist?
At The BMJ we often talk about the “Chinese wall,” a clear demarcation between the advertising sales and editorial teams. This safeguard helps to avoid conflicts of interest, and means […]
Helen Bygrave: HIV viral load in Africa—no longer why but how?
Access to HIV viral load monitoring in resource poor settings has long felt a bit like the search for the Holy Grail—a seemingly hopeless, but essential quest. But at the […]
Simon Nicholas Williams and Kimberly Dienes: Universal mental health checks in schools—some responses to the critics
A recent BMJ article by one of the authors of this post (SW), argued the need for universal mental health checks in schools. This personal view stemmed from a wider […]
Richard Barker: How can academic health science networks (AHSNs) influence GPs to spread innovation?
As independent contractors, GPs cannot be instructed to take up innovation. They will adopt innovations that they can see will benefit their patients and also their practices in terms of […]
“e-Patient Dave” deBronkart: 15 year old’s video raises the question—who gets to say what “patient centred” is?
An impromptu in hospital video by a 15 year old took healthcare social media by storm last week. Posted on Forbes.com on Thursday, by the evening it was in the […]
Trish Groves: Is Twitter any use for two handed debates?
“Jeez, this is a bit like having a serious conversation on top of a mountain fifteen yards apart in 90mph winds,” tweeted doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre (@bengoldacre). “Yes, and […]