Early morning and a young lad, hooded, trainers, hugs his bottle as he staggers home. Last night it started early; cider, beer, and tonic wine. Blue bags on a Friday […]
Latest articles
Veena Rao on addressing undernutrition in India
My previous blog was about the Indian finance minister’s 2012 budget speech, which marked a significant moment for the much awaited, much required, paradigm shift in the government’s approach to […]
Andrew Moscrop: Emergency training in Pakistan
Every night, every half-hour, the whistle and stick man visits. We’ve never met, but I know his work. His job is to walk the streets of our neighbourhood between sunset […]
Peter Lapsley: Unfairer charges
They’ve done it again! While prescription charges were abolished in Wales in 2007, Northern Ireland in 2010, and Scotland in 2011, the Department of Health in England increased them from […]
Richard Smith: Disclosure of conflicts of interest may increase bias
I’ve worried that disclosing conflicts of interest may be counterproductive ever since we did an experiment that showed that readers of articles with declared conflicts discounted not only the believability […]
Chris Williams: When will we learn HOW to deliver healthcare?
If I had one thing in healthcare to banish to my room 101, the choice would be easy: waste, inefficiency, and delays. “That’s three things”’ I hear you shout. Yes […]
David Payne: Lord Ashley of Stoke
The BMJ tends not to commission obituaries of non-doctors. I can understand why. The journal’s print obituary section is already awash with the lives of distinguished doctors from the UK […]
Rhys Davies: The patient will see you now
It’s that time of year again when exams rear their ugly heads. Not for me though—this year’s exams are long over. Instead, the third years are facing their first OSCEs […]
Zosia Kmietowicz: Leaping out of inequalities: the power of imaginative play
I spent last Wednesday afternoon with seven 3-4 year olds from Levenhall nursery in Musselburgh, East Lothian, just outside Edinburgh. They were taking part in an immersive theatre production by […]
Richard Smith: Our need for clockware and swarmware
Tackling the global pandemic problem of non-communicable disease (NCDs) is a complex problem that needs clockware and swarmware. I imagine that most BMJ readers have no idea what that sentence […]