As I foretold three weeks ago, the UK government’s health secretary Jeremy Hunt recently announced his intention to impose his contract on the junior hospital doctors. His cunctatorial Fabian tactics […]
Columnists
Richard Smith: Clinical leaders badly needed but not appreciated
All health systems need clinical leaders to flourish, but being a clinical leader is hard, particularly in the NHS. Those were the main messages from a recent meeting of the Cambridge […]
David Oliver: If you want to explain what’s happening in the NHS, just look at schools and teachers
Imagine you are a teacher or headteacher in a good enough local authority school in an area with its fair share of deprivation and a shrinking funding envelope. The school […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: leave business metaphors to business
Some metaphors have gone beyond cliché to parody, and should never be written in a medical article. They include at the end of the day, level playing field, and moving […]
William Cayley: Single payer healthcare—is it here already?
Despite all the hand wringing and arguments over single payer healthcare in American social debates past and present, what most observers seem to miss (but patients and doctors know very well) […]
Richard Smith: Qualitative research and The BMJ—hidden motives
I’m much amused by the pious positions taken by researchers and BMJ editors in the spirited dispute over qualitative research. The researchers are upset that The BMJ largely excludes qualitative […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Pro patria mori
Exactly a hundred years ago, on 19 February 1916, a British soldier, Captain Robert French, died in London after injuries sustained in battle. The following account is taken from his […]
Richard Smith: Systems thinking is essential for responding to obesity (and much else)
The recent discovery of gravitational waves allows a whole new way of seeing the Universe. With some similarities the recognition that the world is much more complicated and unpredictable than […]
Richard Smith: How might the NHS die?
“The NHS is under tremendous pressure,” I tell a novelist friend. “Could it die?” he asks. “I suppose it could.” “How would that happen?” How would it happen? That’s a […]
Paul Glasziou: Still no evidence for homeopathy
When the National Health and Medical Research Council report on homeopathy concluded that “There was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range […]