Jim Drife, the singing professor of obstetrics and gynaecology from Leeds, wrote a hilarious, teasing column in The BMJ over many years. His columns have now been collected together in […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: How can we achieve a healthy recovery from the pandemic?
I recently saw a cartoon that has uncomfortably embedded itself in my brain: it shows a relatively small tidal wave that is the pandemic, followed by a bigger tidal wave […]
Richard Smith: Healthcare not only fails to respond to suffering but often makes it worse
“The test of a system of medicine should be its adequacy in the face of suffering,” writes the physician Eric J Cassell in his book The Nature of Suffering and […]
Richard Smith: learning from a four-star general on leading in a time of pandemic
No matter what you think about the US, war, or the invasion of Iraq, you can’t help thinking that a four-star general who has led several hundred thousand people in […]
Richard Smith: Support for health and social care staff
Health and social care staff are under enormous strain. The weekly clap and being given priority in shops is much appreciated, but how can more direct, practical, and evidence-based emotional […]
Richard Smith: How to talk to the dying—a lesson from a novel
In one chapter of Elizabeth Strout’s novel Olive, Again Olive Kitteridge, a large, blunt-speaking, retired schoolmistress, encounters in a supermarket Cindy Coombs, who is being treated for cancer and has […]
The arrival of covid-19 in low and middle-income countries should promote training in palliative care
Chances of a healthy recovery from covid-19 are not bright for the elderly who need hospital care. In a series of 5700 patients with covid-19 treated in New York hospitals, […]
Richard Smith: Covid-19—an oblique view on who shall live and who shall die
The day before Boris Johnson announced a lockdown (or cloistering, as I prefer to call it), I sat in a theatre in Tonbridge and watched my brother, Nicholas, playing a […]
Richard Smith: What was difficult if not impossible two weeks ago is happening fast now with covid-19
Almost a quarter of a century ago I wrote in The BMJ about an evolution from “industrial age medicine” to “information age healthcare.” Despite the spread of the internet, social […]
Richard Smith: Four future scenarios of death and dying
The future is unpredictable. The unexpected happens often and can have a major impact. Nevertheless, some thought of how the future might look is important in preparing for it. Scenarios […]