One of the most pressing needs for doctors is to rediscover the joy of practising medicine […]
Columnists
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Festschrift
While my contribution to this section of The BMJ was being published last week, I was in Manchester, at a festschrift for my colleague Brian Houston, marking his retirement, on […]
Richard Smith: A visit to North Halifax shows the importance and the difficulty of community development
“North Halifax is notorious,” Lisa Okonkwo, leader of St George’s Community Trust, tells me as we sit in the old vicarage of the church that is now the home of […]
Kieran Walsh: Should I read this article about safe care, distraction, and the attention economy? Or watch another cute panda bear meme?
Medical knowledge is continually expanding and changing. So it is impossible for individual doctors to remember all that they need to practise safe care. As a result, doctors need access […]
Peter Brindley: Doctor Narcissus will see you now
As a doctor working in Canada, I know that I am very lucky and should be eternally grateful. In a world that talks about fake news, this is not only […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Outcomes, primary and secondary
In my recent articles on how outcomes are assessed in clinical studies I have covered the minimal clinically important difference (MCID), a measure of how large a change in the […]
Abraar Karan: Making sure patients understand and that doctors do too
Abraar Karan considers a case that made him confront how much is lost or misunderstood in doctor-patient communication […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Desmond Laurence’s Clinical Pharmacology
Desmond Laurence (1922–2019), one of the founders of UK clinical pharmacology, died this week. Others, better qualified than I am to do so, will write obituaries. But I should like […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Reported outcomes
In the last few weeks I have been discussing criteria that prescribers may consider in deciding whether to introduce a therapeutic intervention. They include: the minimal clinically important difference (MCID), […]
Richard Smith: Everybody should read The Uninhabitable Earth
Everybody reading The Uninhabitable Earth could literally (the correct use of a usually misused word) save the planet, says Richard Smith The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells is the only […]