You’ve no doubt heard the saying that it takes 18 years for an innovation to be widely adopted in health systems. That should mean that time is up for the […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: Measuring research impact—all the rage but hard to get right
Somehow science managed to struggle through several thousand years, having considerable impact as it went (think electricity, atomic power, penicillin), without either defining or measuring impact, but now measuring the […]
Richard Smith: The shambles of the NHS two week urgent appointment system
I have a lesion on my chest that could be a skin cancer, one of the slow growing non-lethal ones. I’ve had it for about two years and thought little […]
Richard Smith: I’ve got cancer
I couldn’t resist the dramatic title, although, as I’ll disclose below, a less dramatic one would more accurately reflect the content of this piece. Normally a title like “I’ve got […]
Richard Smith: Is precision medicine a fantasy?
Was Richard Smith wrong to call precision medicine a fantasy? […]
Richard Smith: Reducing global road traffic crashes and injuries
The number of road traffic deaths is high and getting higher. How can we change this? […]
Richard Smith: Revisiting “Stalinism in the NHS”
The appalling story of some 600 patients in Gosport Hospital being casually killed and the failure of every authority to take action makes me remember something that I wrote in […]
Richard Smith: Why We Sleep—one of those rare books that changes your worldview and should change society and medicine
One of the professors at Edinburgh Medical School, where I was taught from 1970-76, was a world expert on sleep, but I remember hearing little about sleep at medical school. […]
Richard Smith: A cholera epidemic
Most doctors in high income countries have never seen a case of cholera, but if they were to spend a day in the hospital of the icddr,b (formerly known as the […]
Richard Smith: The case for medical nihilism and “gentle medicine”
Most practising doctors are instinctive medical nihilists, argues Richard Smith […]