Podcasts by The BMJ Podcast

Deep Breath In - what's in store for general practice in the UK from 2022-04-30T10:11:30

This is a special episode of our podcast for GP's, Deep Breath In, where we tackle the everyday challenges of being a GP. With the focus on covid, and the pressure on hospitals, it may be easy to ...

Creativity and wellbeing from 2022-04-22T12:07:52

Paula Redmond, clinical psychologist who supports healthcare workers experiencing burnout and other difficulties related to their job. Before this, she worked for the NHS until she experienced bull...

Quality improvement and wellbeing are inextricably linked from 2022-04-15T16:55:56

Over the course of the last few years, the BMJ has published a series of articles in our Quality Improvement series - aiming to give those new to improvement science a good grasp of how to think ab...

Doctor Informed - Medicine's me too moments from 2022-04-04T10:19:01

In this episode we’re going to be talking about misogyny in surgery, recent revelations about sexual harassment in the theatre have emerged - but these behaviours have been endemic for a while, eve...

Covid vaccine safety, Methenamine hippurate, and intersectionality from 2022-03-30T18:08:53

In this episode of Talk Evidence, Helen Macdonald, the BMJ’s research integrity editor is joined by Joe Ross, US research editor, and Juan Franco, editor in chief of BMJEBM, to talk about all thing...

Wellbeing - hot food on a night shift from 2022-03-24T12:46:54

The issue of food on nightshifts is a perennial grumble in the NHS, and though it might seem trivial, what does it say of an organisation if they demand their staff work when they're hungry, and wh...

Everyone’s going to make a mistake from 2022-03-17T14:01:52

Medicine is complex, and as a doctor you won't always do the right thing - but you can prepare yourself for when mistakes happen, both emotionally and logistically. In this episode of Doctor Infor...

Solving retention to support workforce recovery from 2022-03-11T18:21:23

The covid-19 pandemic has stretched healthcare staff like never before. As part of the 2022 Nuffield Trust summit, The BMJ hosted a roundtable discussion looking at why workers leave the NHS and ho...

Rural healthcare in a pandemic from 2022-03-07T15:09:10

In this episode of the podcast we’re going to be talking about rural healthcare - and specifically the difficulties that distance, demographics, and funding have introduced into the world’s covid-1...

The blame game from 2022-02-25T13:29:57

In previous episodes of Doctor Informed, we've talked about the importance of speaking out, but the culture in your organisation might not always make that easy, especially if you feel something ha...

Learning to listen from 2022-02-04T17:35:10

In previous episodes of Doctor Informed, we've talked about the importance of speaking out, and how to do that better, but as you progress through your medical career, you will become the person to...

Talk Evidence - isolation periods, openness, and environmental impacts from 2022-01-28T17:35:44

In the first Talk Evidence of 2022, we'll be asking about the evidence for isolation - now that isolation periods are being reduced, or even stopped in the event of a negative lateral flow test, we...

Why is it so hard to speak out about patient safety? from 2022-01-21T10:54:48

In the previous episodes of Doctor Informed, we've heard why it's so important to talk about patient safety concerns, and some of the mechanisms that allow hospital staff to raise them, but knowing...

US Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine from 2022-01-15T13:03:12

Rachel Levine Trained as a paediatrician, before becoming firstly the state of Pennsylvania's Physician General, then its Health Secretary. During president Joe Biden's administration, she was nom...

Talking Christmas Evidence 2021 from 2021-12-22T09:43:02

The BMJ has special criteria for considering Christmas research: first it should make you laugh, and then it should make you think. In this festive episode of the Talk Evidence podcast, our regul...

Who is responsible for patient safety? from 2021-12-16T18:20:43

As clinicians, we're all taught that patient safety is everyone's responsibility - but on the ground it can be hard to know how to most effectively report concerns, especially if you're not sure ho...

Exit interview with Fiona Godlee from 2021-12-15T17:56:30

Fiona Godlee is stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of The BMJ after 16 years in the position. She was the first female editor of the journal, and over her tenure has seen a lot of changes - both to ...

Covid and conflict In South Asia from 2021-12-10T18:52:15

In this second podcast focussing on the covid response in South Asia, we’re focussing on the intersection of conflict and covid in the region. The pandemic has highlighted the underlying weaknesses...

Life Support - Being a compassionate colleague from 2021-11-30T17:47:38

In this episode of Doctor Informed, Clara Munro is joined by Ayisha Ashmore - and they're getting to grips with being a compassionate colleague. While the topic might seem warm and fuzzy, there's ...

Wellbeing - feeling addicted to your phone? from 2021-11-26T12:53:25

In the wellbeing podcast, the dread topic of phone usage has come up again - how social media, and an "always on" culture can affect our wellbeing. But knowing that, and changing our behaviour are...

Doctor Informed - The patterns which emerge from 2021-11-16T10:59:51

When you hear the reports from a major patient safety issue, it will be shocking to hear how they have played out - but the patterns in behaviour, of people and institutions which have gone disastr...

Talk Evidence - Bones, nutrition, pain relief, and overdiagnosis. from 2021-11-05T19:16:08

In this month’s Talk evidence, we’re going back to our roots and avoiding covid - so sit back and listen to Helen Macdonald and Joe Ross discuss a new nutrition study to prevent fractures in older ...

Introducing Doctor Informed from 2021-10-24T18:15:32

Doctor Informed is a new podcast for hospital doctors, from The BMJ - created in collaboration with THIS Institute, and sponsored by Medical Protection. Medical expertise is fundamental to the pra...

Introducing Doctor Informed from 2021-10-24T18:15:32

Doctor Informed is a new podcast for hospital doctors, from The BMJ - created in collaboration with THIS Institute, and sponsored by Medical Protection. Medical expertise is fundamental to the pra...

Wellbeing - QI approach to improving your wellbeing from 2021-10-24T17:36:20

It's easy to decide to do something like exercise, or a hobby to improve your wellbeing, but actually following through and make that a regular part of your week can be much harder. In this podcas...

Covid in south Asia - India and Nepal from 2021-10-17T09:43:33

In this podcast series, Kamran Abbasi, executive editor of The BMJ will convene experts from South Asia to discuss how the pandemic has affected the region, how measures like lock-down and vaccinat...

Talk Evidence - testing for respiratory tract infections, cannabis for pain, & covid outcomes from 2021-09-29T17:50:22

This week our regular panelists, Helen Macdonald and Joe Ross, are joined by Juan Franco, editor in chief of BMJ Evidence Based Medicine - to take a primary care focussed look at what's been happen...

Wellbeing - tired or fatigued, and why the difference might matter from 2021-09-24T09:41:26

There has been a lot of work on the way in which surgeon's are affected by tiredness - and the whole medical workforce can probably relate to their experience. But there's a difference between tir...

The future of Afghan healthcare from 2021-09-18T11:22:45

The infrastructure of Afghanistan healthcare is under threat, as international agencies who run clinics withdraw from the country. At the same time, some of the healthcare workforce are leaving the...

Healthcare In Afghanistan Now from 2021-09-09T13:34:43

The final evacuation planes have left Kabul airport, and Afghanistan’s government have ceded power to the Taliban. Amongst the international community, worries about what that transition of power...

Talk Evidence - real world vaccine data, GP records and CVD from 2021-09-03T16:31:14

In this month's Talk Evidence, Helen Macdonald and Joe Ross are back with a wry look at the world of Evidence Based Medicine. They give us a round up of real world data emerging to address various...

Junior doctors improving hospital wellbeing from 2021-08-27T14:14:23

The Midlands Charter, is a set of principles that hospitals in the midlands region of England have signed up to, to improve the health and wellbeing of trainees working in the area. It was created ...

Wellbeing - scheduling and burnout from 2021-08-13T15:24:31

Rota gaps are a big problem when it comes to loading stress on the medical workforce, and there is big pressure to spread the workforce as evenly as possible across wards and shifts. However the t...

Women’s health and gender inequalities - Legislating for change from 2021-08-05T19:50:32

It's been 25 years since the declaration on the rights of women, was signed in Beijing - and in that time the landscape of health car inequity has changed. To celebrate we created 3 podcasts, in co...

Wellbeing - surveying the mental health of NHS staff from 2021-07-30T14:26:59

In the wellbeing podcast, we have had a lot of personal experience of the pandemic, and schemes to support staff - but always we've wanted to know if there's research which can tell us how universa...

Talk Evidence - Freedom Day from 2021-07-21T15:53:59

The 19th of July in the UK saw the relaxation of covid rules that have been in place for 18 months - social distancing requirements in venues, mask wearing in public will no longer be legally manda...

Women’s health and gender inequalities - The science of women's health from 2021-07-15T13:01:49

It's been 25 years since the declaration on the rights of women, was signed in Beijing - and in that time the landscape of health car inequity has changed. To celebrate we created 3 podcasts, in co...

Wellbeing - the need for culturally aware support from 2021-07-08T09:53:30

We know the pandemic has disproportionately affected the NHS workers who come from a ethnic minorities, we also know that doctors from an ethnic minority face additional barriers to accessing suppo...

Women's health and gender inequalities - Campaigning for change from 2021-06-28T09:09:59

It's been 25 years since the declaration on the rights of women, was signed in Beijing - and in that time the landscape of health car inequity has changed. To celebrate we created 3 podcasts, in co...

Talk Evidence - GP data, excess mortality and FDA approval from 2021-06-20T11:07:34

In this Talk Evidence, Helen Macdonald, Joe Ross and Duncan Jarvies discuss what's going on in the world of EBM. Firstly, a while ago on the podcast, we concluded that excess mortality would be th...

Wellbeing - are men worse at sounding the alarm about their mental health? from 2021-06-04T15:51:27

We've been bringing you stories of doctors wellbeing for a while in the podcast, but we noticed a pattern. Woman would come on and talk about their own difficulties, men would talk about other peop...

Coronavirus Second Wave - wrapping up the UK's response from 2021-05-28T16:24:32

Finally it seems that life might return to normal in the UK, as the vaccination efforts continue apace, and despite concern about increasingly spreading variants, our hospitals are not being overwh...

Coronavirus Second Wave - wrapping up a the UK's response from 2021-05-28T16:24:32

Finally it seems that life might return to normal in the UK, as the vaccination efforts continue apace, and despite concern about increasingly spreading variants, our hospitals are not being overwh...

Wellbeing - Questions to ask yourself, if you think medicine may no longer be for you from 2021-05-21T14:19:13

The pandemic has wrought a lot of change, not least to doctors relationship to their careers. While still loving the patient interaction, we're increasingly hearing that doctors are disillusioned w...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - Research on vaccine safety, treatment for dementia from 2021-05-14T17:15:38

In this week's Talk Evidence, Joe Ross, BMJ editor and professor at Yale again joins Helen Macdonald to talk about emerging evidence on Covid-19. They also welcome to the podcast Juan Franco, fami...

Roopa Dhatt - Getting woman into leadership positions in healthcare from 2021-05-07T16:13:39

This interview is part of our BMJ interview series, where we talk to the people who are changing medicine. The series thus far has been a bit male dominated - reflecting the leadership in medicine ...

Wellbeing - Humanising medicine from 2021-04-29T16:58:12

In medicine, a lot of work has been done to encourage person centred care - but can that maxim be extended to the people working within the healthcare system? Subodh Dave has just been elected as ...

Wellbeing - After shielding from 2021-04-22T17:19:14

On this wellbeing podcast, Abi and Cat are joined by Emma Lishman, a clinical psychologist and part of the North Bristol NHS Trust's staff wellbeing team.Emma helps doctors return to training after...

Coronavirus second wave - headaches abound from 2021-04-14T11:00:18

Recorded on Tuesday 13th of April, as the shops open in the UK, and England is heading to the beer gardens. The roll out of the vaccination programme has completed its first phase, and second doses...

Measure the broader impacts of healthcare from 2021-04-10T12:15:15

The synergistic linking of increasing health and wealth is broadly accepted - it's an integral part of the thinking between the Sustainable Development Goals, and the World Bank's call for universa...

Talk Evidence - children and covid, varients of concern, ivormectin update from 2021-04-02T15:31

The evidence geekery continues, and this week Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are joined again by Joe Ross, The BMJ's US research editor, and professor of medicine and public health at Yale. Th...

Coronavirus second wave - vaccination roll out changes, uncertainty about long covid from 2021-03-25T09:42:48

In the UK, phase 2 of our coronavirus vaccination strategy may be delayed by supply problems, at the same time many GPs, who carried out the majority of the first vaccination phases, are declining ...

Wellbeing - Put yourself first from 2021-03-18T17:46:12

In this Wellbeing podcast, sponsored by medical protection, Abi Rimmer and Cat Chatfield talk to Susanna Petche and Reina Popat, GPs and members of First You - an organisation of healthcare workers...

What should "following the science" mean for government policy? from 2021-03-15T21:29:35

This round table, recorded at the nuffield summit 2021, asks what does following the science actually mean - do ministers understand the nuance of the science in the pandemic, and how does uncertai...

Talk Evidence - Inside the JCVI, and the key to grading evidence from 2021-03-12T20:07:13

In a slightly different talk evidence, Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are bringing you a couple, of in depth interviews, Firstly, Anthony Harnden, GP, academic and member of the UK's Joint Com...

Stephen Thomas - Behind the scenes in the Pfizer vaccine trial from 2021-03-08T18:12:59

Never has the spotlight been as strong on a clinical trial as that on the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, the first approved for covid-19. In this interview, Joanne Silberner spoke to its lead principal...

Coronavirus second wave - cancelled surgery, increasing waiting lists from 2021-03-03T18:23:17

Many surgeries have been cancelled during the pandemic, with good reason, as early data showed the increase in mortality associated with a coronavirus infection, but now waiting lists grow, and the...

Wellbeing - speaking out about mental health in the NHS from 2021-02-26T13:07:34

Ashling Lillis is a now consultant in acute medicine at Whittington Health NHS Trust, but she was almost a consultant in intensive care medicine - but a mental health crisis just 6 months before sh...

The BMJ Interview - Jeremy Farrar; sharing the vaccine is enlightened self interest from 2021-02-19T16:23:56

Jeremy Farrar, is director of the Wellcome Trust, as well as advisor to the government on SAGE. Trained as a medic and with a PhD in neuro-immunology, he was a professor of Tropical Medicine and Gl...

Corona virus second wave - Palliative care, and online abuse from 2021-02-17T12:13:30

In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to; Partha Kar, consultant in diabetes and endocrinology in Portsmouth, Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire, and Nisreen Alwan, publi...

Wellbeing special - A post vaccination mindfullness moment from 2021-02-12T17:49:11

The observation period, after receiving a covid-19 vaccination may be the only 15 minutes someone in the NHS might get all day. In this podcast, we're joined again by Chris Bu, psychiatry trainee ...

Talk Evidence - re-hospitalistion for covid-19, remote hypertension intervention from 2021-02-12T11:51:10

The evidence geekery continues, and this week Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are joined by Joe Ross, The BMJ's US research editor, and professor of medicine and public health at Yale. This wee...

Neil Greenberg on tackling PTSD in the NHS from 2021-02-09T17:59:34

Neil Greenberg is a psychiatrist, and professor of Defence Mental Health at King's College London. He spent 23 in the military, and now continues to work with them on things like peer led traumatic...

The BMJ interview - Jeremy Hunt MP from 2021-02-08T19:27:42

Jeremy Hunt probably needs no introduction to our audience - the UK's longest serving health minister, he now chairs Westminster's Health and Social Care Committee - the powerful committee that hol...

Coronavirus second wave - The NHS one year on from 2021-02-04T10:33:20

The "public health emergency of international concern" was issued by the WHO a year and a lifetime ago. As the UK ramps up testing for the South African virus variant, and is full steam ahead on va...

The BMJ interview - Tom Frieden, former CDC director on why we thought we were prepared from 2021-02-02T18:06:58

It’s been just over a year since the WHO declared the pandemic a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” - if you cast your mind back to then, the news was full of reassurances about how...

Coronavirus second wave - 100,000 deaths from 2021-01-27T15:50:09

Recorded on the 26th January 2021 The UK has become, officially, the worst performing country in terms of Covid-19 deaths, per head of population - and the number of people in hospital is still hi...

Coronavirus second wave - The view from the front line from 2021-01-20T18:28:51

In the UK, over 37,000 people are in hospital with covid-19, and the NHS comes closer than ever to being overwhelmed - though 4 million people have received their first dose of the vaccine, we are ...

The BMJ interview: Fixing America’s covid response in the Biden era from 2021-01-19T12:35:58

US president elect Joe Biden wasted no time in appointing a special advisory board of experts to guide America out of its coronavirus crisis. One of those experts is Celine Gounder, an infectious...

Talk Evidence - Lateral flow tests update, not the best public health approach from 2021-01-16T17:54:47

In this episode of Talk Evidence, Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, returns to the pod with an update on lateral flow tests - and why the government plan for us...

The BMJ Interview - Andrew Pollard on the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine from 2021-01-14T16:26:45

Andrew Pollard is Director of the Oxford Vaccines Group - who, along with Astra Zeneca, have developed an modified adenovirus vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. In this interview we talk to him about the dev...

Wellbeing - where to turn for emotional support during the pandemic from 2021-01-12T17:20:28

The Samaritans have traditionally been there for people in a crisis, those who are on the verge of ending their life by suicide - but during this pandemic, with the personal toll of caring for covi...

Food aid - helping providers support the health of their users from 2021-01-08T18:37:57

The growth in the need for food aid, in the UK, has been staggering. That's why The BMJ has chosen the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) as its annual charity appeal. Nutritional guidelines whic...

Coronavirus second wave - The UK's fourth lockdown from 2021-01-06T11:48:53

Recorded Tuesday 5th Jan 2021 As the UK enters lockdown, again, schools are closed, the NHS struggles under the surge of cases, new variants of SARS-COV-2 virus stalk the world, and vaccination pr...

Listening is the first part of research from 2021-01-05T10:39:07

The BMJ has long campaigned for better patient and public participation in research, making the case that it leads to better outcomes for patients and for society - but an article published in the ...

A (non-systematic) evidence review of 2020 from 2021-01-03T09:43:44

As 2021 hoves into view, we look back at a year of extraordinary evidence. Helen Macdonald is joined by Joe Ross, one of The BMJ's research editors, as well as a researcher at Yale.

They discuss...

The Deep Breath talking wellbeing evidence round-up of the year. from 2021-01-01T12:29:52

In this end-of-year podcast from Deep Breath In, we're bringing you a light hearted look back at 2020, and trying to remember some of the non-covid-19 medicine that has crossed our desks. This fes...

Talking Christmas evidence - how Christmas research is chosen from 2020-12-28T13:41:39

If you've had time to digest this year's Christmas edition of The BMJ, you might have wondered how those papers get into The BMJ. Well in this Talk Evidence podcast, Helen Macdonald, UK research e...

Wellbeing - Human factors, and Christmas Logistics from 2020-12-24T17:47:05

How do human behaviours affect patient outcomes? And what has that got to do with Christmas? Graham Shaw, director of Critical Factors, and Peter Brennan, a maxillofacial surgeon in Portsmouth, jo...

Food insecurity in the 6th largest economy from 2020-12-23T14:28:14

Every year, the BMJ has a charity appeal - we’ve regularly focused on organisations like MSF, or Lifebox - providing support to areas of the world which don’t have good healthcare provision… This y...

The soundscape of a hospital from 2020-12-22T15:52:39

Until hear death in 2019, Annabel and her husband James Weaver, spent a lot of time together in hospitals - in patient and outpatient wards, waiting in makeshift waiting rooms in corridors and atr...

Rob Poynton wants you to pause from 2020-12-18T13:25:07

Robert Poynton is an associate fellow of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, and author of books designed to help people work in ways which help both their career and wellbeing. ...

Coronavirus second wave - Should we cancel Christmas? from 2020-12-16T11:06:21

As London and some neighbouring counties move up to tier 3, and Germany, Italy and The Netherlands impose tighter restrictions over over the coming days of Christmas, in this podcast we ask - shoul...

Inside a vaccine trial from 2020-12-14T10:04:25

The last few weeks we’ve been feverish in our coverage of vaccines - the evidence base for them is, how they’ve been evaluated and licensed, and who’s going to get them first. But what we’ve not...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - poor public messaging, and vaccine approval data from 2020-12-11T19:23:04

The vaccines are being rolled out - but approval is still on an emergency basis, and the evidence underpinning those decisions is only just becoming available for scrutiny. In this podcast we talk...

Coronavirus second wave - the vaccine's here, but the pandemic isn't over from 2020-12-08T17:24:19

As the first people outside of a trial have started receiving Pfizer's sars-cov-2 vaccine, including Matt, but that's not the end of the story for the pandemic, there are still logistics of rollout...

Lockdown lessons from an Antarctic winter from 2020-12-04T13:51:57

Anne Hicks, is an emergency medicine consultant in Plymouth, and for 16 years was the medical director for the British Antarctic Survey (she stepped down last year). The British Antarctic Survey o...

Corona virus second wave - Fears for tiers from 2020-12-02T11:13:28

As the first vaccine for corona virus is approved, and England joins the other nations of the UK outside of full lockdown, we are all entering tiers of restrictions - variable across the country, w...

Calum Semple - the efficacy of mass testing in Liverpool from 2020-12-01T13:52:06

The government has decided to pursue a strategy of mass-testing in Liverpool, in a pilot to see what effect that has on containment of corona virus. A lot of criticism has been levelled at the sch...

Why the government is being sued over PPE contracts from 2020-11-26T13:16:24

The BMJ is a champion of openness and transparency in research, in clinical practice and in health policy. However, if you’ve kept and eye on the journals recently, you’ll have seen that governmen...

Coronavirus second wave - recentring patients in our covid-19 response from 2020-11-24T18:37:25

As further promising news emerges of vaccine effectiveness, although still with no data published, and as plans emerge for the return home of university students and limited festive winter celebrat...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - uncertainty in treatment, uncertainty in prevention from 2020-11-21T13:12:39

Uncertainty abounds - even as we get better data on treatments, with the big RCTs beginning to report, and new trials on masks, the evidence remains uncertain, in both the statistical realm (confid...

Wellbeing - What we've learned from treating doctors from 2020-11-20T13:01:20

Clare Gerada and Zaid Al-Najjar have been treating doctors for a while now, through the NHS Practitioner Programme. In that time they have noticed some themes in the issues that bring doctors to ...

Coronavirus second wave - vaccines, how ready is the needle to hit the arm? from 2020-11-17T19:21:05

Covid-19 continues its grip on the Northern Hemisphere alongside news of a vaccine trial showing real success at first glance. In this second wave update, we explore the latest issues with healthca...

How well did hospitals perform for their staff during covid? from 2020-11-13T12:47:21

In the first wave of covid-19, hospitals started to reconfigure space and services, to provide rest areas and food for staff, to help them cope with the surge in patients. Michael West, professor ...

Coronavirus second wave - viral transmission and a vaccine announcement from 2020-11-11T15:13:26

Covid-19 continues its grip on the Northern Hemisphere alongside news of a vaccine trial showing real success at first glance. In this second wave update, we explore the latest issues with healthca...

A lump in the throat with Nick Hamilton, Deonne Dersch-Mills and Bonnie Kaplan from 2020-11-05T16:51:13

A lump in the throat is a classic GP presentation, but one that often causes a lot of worry. Many people are struggling with high levels of anxiety anyway at the moment, and this may manifest physi...

Coronavirus second wave - Making the lockdown work from 2020-11-03T18:36:55

As the second spike in covid-19 cases grows, we want to take stock of what's happening in the NHS. In these second wave updates, clinicians from primary care, secondary care, and public health, dis...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - talking risk, remdesivir, and relevant research from 2020-10-30T18:58:02

In this talk evidence covid-19 update, we’re taking on risk - how do you figure out your individual risk of dying from the disease? Try QCovid, but remember that it’s figuring out your risk back in...

Chris Whitty on the challenge of winter, lockdown, and following the science from 2020-10-29T17:12:26

Chris Whitty probably needs no introduction to our UK audience - he's the chief medical advisor to the UK government, has played a pivotalrole in shaping the country's response to Covid-19. He rar...

Coronavirus second wave - what the modelling say about slowing transmission from 2020-10-27T19:47:13

As the world sees an upsurge in infections, this "second wave" feels different to the first - we have a much better understanding of the biology of the virus, in hospitals, guidelines for treatment...

Deep Breath In - EUPD with Leisha Davies, Soumitra Burman-Roy and Marie Stella McClure from 2020-10-22T14:21:19

Personality disorder is often referred to as the “Cinderella” diagnosis of mental health. Around 1 in 20 people is estimated to have a personality disorder, and it is a neglected and under-resource...

Second wave updates - How it's affecting practice now from 2020-10-21T14:27:54

As the second spike in covid-19 cases grows, we want to take stock of what's happening in the NHS. In these second wave updates, clinicians from primary care, secondary care, and public health, di...

Wellbeing - Dreading the second wave from 2020-10-20T10:02:32

The "second wave" of covid is hitting the UK, and clinicians are anticipating a spike in demand in the NHS. The inevitability of that is weighing on NHS staff's minds. In this podcast, Cormac Doyl...

Economics for Drs - what you need to know to understand UBI and a jobs guarantee from 2020-10-16T11:15:55

As the economic fall out of covid-19 starts to bite, attention is turning to how the state can support everyone - especially if the pandemic turns into a depression. Universal basic income, and a ...

Coughing kids with Tim Spector and Edward Snelson from 2020-10-08T14:06:16

Persistent coughing in children is always a challenge, both for parents trying to describe and measure the cough, and for doctors making a diagnosis. In the current climate, this is all the more di...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - antigen testing and developing non drug evidence from 2020-10-05T13:03:05

In this Talk Evidence covid-19 update, Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham gives us an update on testing technology. Will the point of care tests make a different ...

A way for healthcare to become net-zero for carbon from 2020-10-02T18:03:19

David Pencheon, Renee Salas and Ed Maibach join us to talk about how healthcare can, and should, take leadership on climate change. With a few exceptions, the healthcare industry lags behind in ef...

'Flu vaccine season - with Nikki Turner and Jeff Kwong from 2020-09-24T16:00:07

With the annual flu season looming, GPs are anticipating a frenzy of vaccinations, perhaps more so than ever this year. As so many 'flu and respiratory viruses circulate every year, and as the 'fl...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - covid in kids, and the winter cold season from 2020-09-23T15:42:17

This episode was recorded on 18 September - just before the news came out about the new lockdown measures. We’ll hear Carl and Helen’s thoughts, but we also want to hear a broad range of views - so...

Nudge it from 2020-09-21T17:43:16

Nudging seemed to be all the rage a few years ago - a way of changing individual behaviours to help people make better choices, about their diet, exercise and other habits. A lot of hype ensued, t...

Anthony Fauci - on changing science, long-covid, and political intrusion into health agencies from 2020-09-18T16:34:21

Dr Anthony Fauci needs no introduction, as head of the NIAID for almost four decades, and the U.S. government's leading advisor on infectious diseases, and leader in the country's response to Covid...

Talking about obesity with Stephanie deGiorgio and Naveed Sattar from 2020-09-10T08:41:38

Fatphobia has been described as society’s last ‘ism’. Whilst our understanding of weight and health has changed over time, there is still a stigma towards people who are overweight or obese, and an...

Wellbeing - Mask shaming from 2020-09-05T12:18:08

The social norms that guide our behaviour in the world aren’t often quick to change - but the imperative to wear a mask in public has rapidly taken hold, establish by law, but policed by the public...

Talk Evidence Covid-19 Update - Lockdown, a spoonful of honey, and weight loss from 2020-08-28T07:47:09

There are have been local lockdowns in the UK, in places such as Oldham, Birmingham, Manchester – but what is the criteria for making that decision? In the non-Covid world: does honey alleviate sy...

Time For A Pill Check With Anne McGregor And Tara Stein from 2020-08-28T07:23:28

Contraceptive pill check-up appointments used to be simple and straightforward for GPs, and frequently felt like a welcome reprieve from more complex consultations. However, there’s often more to t...

Wellbeing – The joy of socks from 2020-08-21T13:50:17

In Australia, a staggering 25% of doctors have had thoughts of suicide in the past 12 months, a recent survey said. Mental health problems are higher in medicine than any other job – and yet health...

What Do We Know About Long Covid from 2020-08-20T09:19:49

Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary care health sciences at the University of Oxford has been a powerhouse of covid-19 evidence synthesis. She pulled together advice on doing remote consultatio...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - Living meta-analysis and covid uncertainty from 2020-08-15T11:37:52

1.00) Carl has been looking at PCR testing, and explains why it picks up both viable SARS-cov-2, but also fragments of it’s RNA - leading to potential over diagnosis. (8.50 ) What did the Living ...

Thinking about vitamin D with Andrew Grey and Tom Chatfield from 2020-08-13T14:00:48

Interest in vitamin D, and it’s association with a range of health outcomes continues - at least if the regular flurry of papers on the subject that are submitted to The BMJ are anything to go by, ...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - How well have physical distancing measures worked? from 2020-07-31T16:33:04

Fresh outbreaks of covid in Europe and a wave of infections in the United States have been in the news this week, highlighting the renewed need for social distancing – but to what extent? In this ...

“Trust me, I’m a GP” with Karen Praeter and Rhea Boyd from 2020-07-31T14:28:26

In light of the publication of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review (the Cumberlege report) in early July, which assessed the use of vaginal mesh, sodium valproate and Primod...

Wellbeing – addiction during lockdown from 2020-07-30T09:12

Lockdown has been such a stressful period that many healthcare professionals developed abnormal behaviours to cope. Addiction is one such behaviour, be it to a substance – alcohol for example – ...

Marian Knight - Improving obstetric outcomes with a single dose of antibiotics from 2020-07-25T14:43:15

This time of year we would usually be doing some podcasts from the BMJ awards - but the pandemic has delayed our plans. We’re still working on acknowledging some of the best medicine from around t...

David Pencheon - measuring the climate impact of the NHS from 2020-07-25T14:41:37

This time of year we would usually be doing some podcasts from the BMJ awards - but the pandemic has delayed our plans. We’re still working on acknowledging some of the best medicine from around t...

Covid public health - Data is fundamental from 2020-07-22T19:01:01

As the pandemic play out, we’ve seen ways in which the collection of covid data - and it’s sharing, has been flawed, with reports in the UK that local authorities haven't got granular data, and in ...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - How will we know if a vaccine works? from 2020-07-17T16:48:51

Vaccines have been in the news this week - but when you dig into the stories, it turns out that the hype is about phase 1 trials. We're a long way from being sure any of the 150 possible vaccines b...

Tackling racism with Annabel Sowemimo, Shani Scott and Joan Saddler OBE from 2020-07-16T17:02:09

The signs and symptoms of racism have long permeated our society, and are embedded in our clinical practice and medical education. Recent events in the US, including the murder of George Floyd, hav...

Making the drug and device system fit for patients from 2020-07-15T19:09:54

A series of medical scandals prompted Jeremy Hunt, former UK health secretary to launch the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review - with the explicit aim of strengthening the pat...

What are the chances of an American vaccine? from 2020-07-10T14:15:16

US President Donald Trump has been pushing hard for an American vaccine against Covid-19. He's named the program Operation Warp Speed, which has many people worried that safety tests will be rushe...

Wellbeing – how to say no from 2020-07-08T10:00:31

We all know that healthcare professionals are stretching themselves to provide the care that’s needed right now. But there are instances when you might find yourself out of your comfort zone or bei...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - drop in excess deaths, HIV drugs, academic promotion from 2020-07-03T18:57:06

In this week's Talk Evidence we're hearing about how the death rate has dropped below average, disappointment about HIV drugs for covid-19 treatment, a trial to reduce polypharmacy, and why academi...

Lowering the shield with Julia Marcus and Carol Liddle from 2020-07-02T13:44:40

The relaxation of the COVID-19 lockdown regulations is raising a lot of questions, both for doctors and for patients. This week, we discuss how the lack of clarity and coherence in public health me...

David Michaels - Doubt is an industry tactic from 2020-07-01T10:05:45

For a long time, the BMJ has been interested in conflicts of interest and how that skews the research base. We also heard in our podcast on "Big Tan" that science is being used to sow seeds of do...

Covid-19 in the U.S. - returning to work in a pandemic from 2020-06-26T13:22:48

In the third part of our series of podcasts “Corona Virus as Seen Through a US Lens,” features editor for The BMJ, Joanne Silberner, talks to Dr. Adeline Goss about the experience of being a new mo...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - dexamethosone, testing, rehabilitation after covid. from 2020-06-25T10:23:21

This week we're looking beyond the press release for dexamethasone, the long awaited review of antibody testing, and how well people are recovering after surviving acute covid-19. (2.36) The prep...

Mala Rao on the UK's new race in health observatory from 2020-06-17T16:33:07

Earlier this year, the bmj published a racism in medicine issue - the issue was guest edited by Lord Victor Adebowale, chief executive of the NHS Confederation and Professor Mala Rao, professor of ...

Resetting General Practice with Martin Marshall, Jenny Doust and Toyin Ajayi from 2020-06-17T13:34:14

In this week’s episode, our focus is on what the post-COVID world of general practice might look like. The pandemic has exposed the inequalities in our social and healthcare systems, but has also g...

The corona virus pandemic in South America from 2020-06-15T13:18:44

At the end of May, the WHO said that South America has become the new epicentre of the covid-19 pandemic. The majority of those with covid are in Brazil - not entirely surprising given it is the ...

Wellbeing - the art of the staycation from 2020-06-15T11:46:06

n normal times, around this time we’d start thinking about weekend breaks and summer holidays abroad. More than most healthcare staff and other key workers are in dire need of time out. Given th...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - surgisphere data, and protests in a pandemic from 2020-06-12T17:57:43

This week, we’re asking questions about surgisphere data, and how it might have got into such high impact journals, we’re also talking about the protests around the world about structural racism - ...

Wellbeing - how Burmese Buddhism can help from 2020-06-10T10:53:51

How might Burmese Buddhism help deal with pandemic stress? Christopher Bu drew on his familial heritage and the tradition of practicing mindfulness to cope with the stresses of studying to be a ...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - second wave and care home failings from 2020-06-08T11:54:23

In this episode of Talk Evidence, we'll be finding out if second waves are inevitable (or even a thing), how the UK's failure to protect it's care homes is symbolic of a neglected part of public li...

Counting the ways Donald Trump failed in the pandemic from 2020-06-05T13:26:04

The Trump administration was left a playbook for pandemics when they entered the Whitehouse, but even before covid-19 was a threat systematically dismantled the public health protections put in pla...

Testing times with James McCormack and Jess Watson from 2020-06-04T10:39:23

For GPs, testing patients is their “bread and butter”. This week, we discuss the “better safe than sorry” attitude towards testing, which is so common among doctors – are we guilty of over-testing ...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - remdesivir redux, the overwhelming volume of research from 2020-06-03T09:45:03

That remdesivir study has finally been published - what does it say and is it as independant as claimed. Also, as the world's focus turned to covid, so have researchers - and they've produced over ...

Ray Moynihan - Declarations of interest in healthcare leaders from 2020-05-29T10:58:33

*Non covid content alert* While the last couple of months have been covid-19 focused, the work of the beforetimes carries on - including a topic the BMJ is perennially interested in, industry fun...

Wellbeing – how to write a wellbeing prescription from 2020-05-27T18:21:21

How might stress affect your performance as a healthcare worker? That’s the question that Mark Stacey, a consultant obstetric anaesthetist in Cardiff, has been interested in for the past 10 years...

Public health response to covid-19 - data integrity and the importance of international comparison from 2020-05-26T17:26:05

This last week has seen questions raised about the integrity of some of the epidemiological data being produced by US states, and as rates continue to grow in some countries international compariso...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - strategies to end lockdown, more testing from 2020-05-22T18:18:12

This week we're focussing on what kind of information we need to be able to collect and use as the country transitions out of lockdown - and why local lockdowns may be here for some time. We also ...

Talking about dying from covid with Scott Murray and Katherine Shear from 2020-05-21T16:39:32

With COVID-19 still ongoing, and at the forefront of the minds of doctors, patients and members of the public alike, difficult conversations are taking place - GPs are encouraged to talk about deat...

Pandemics from history - how they inform our response now from 2020-05-21T11:48:47

Does history count as a non-pharmaceutical intervention? Much of our view on what to do in this pandemic has been influenced by the 1917 Spanish 'flu outbreak - even though covid-19 seems to be act...

Adam Kucharski, using viral epidemiology to combat fake news from 2020-05-19T17:42:03

Hydroxychloroquine is in the news again - as Trump and some news organisations are pushing it as a treatment, despite evidence (published in The BMJ) showing it lacks efficacy, and has a load of po...

Adam Kucharski, using viral epidemiology to combat fake news from 2020-05-19T17:42:03

Hydroxychloroquine is in the news again - as Trump and some news organisations are pushing it as a treatment, despite evidence (published in The BMJ) showing it lacks efficacy, and has a load of po...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - answering questions with big data from 2020-05-17T11:03:43

Big data is being crunched to help us tackle some of the enormous amount of uncertainty about covid-19, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, treatment options, things we shouldn't be doing. In th...

Soumya Swaminathan - WHO's chief scientist is trying to fix research during a pandemic from 2020-05-14T17:55:21

If you’re a regular listener to our podcasts, you’ll have heard how Covid is exposing the cracks in our systems of healthcare - from showing how poorly provisioned elderly social care is, to how an...

Wellbeing – how to deal with the post-emergency crash from 2020-05-13T18:20:58

The first peak of the pandemic has passed, the situation in hospitals is more manageable. While healthcare workers are preparing for the long haul, Abi and Cat discuss how to deal with this period ...

Public health response - Lifting thelockdown from 2020-05-12T16:40:05

We’re at the point in the pandemic that restrictions on the way people live and work are being relaxed around the world, but how that changes safety for the population is very different depending o...

Talk evidence covid-19 update - natural history of covid, include patients in guidelines from 2020-05-09T09:13

For the next few months Talk Evidence is going to focus on the new corona virus pandemic. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty about the disease, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, treatme...

Wellbeing – coping with Covid fatigue from 2020-05-08T10:00:46

We are more than six weeks into the lockdown and if you were to gauge the mood of the nation, it would be one of fatigue. It started as an all-hands-on-deck emergency situation, but it now transpir...

Coping with Covid with Monica Schoch-Spana and Jud Brewer from 2020-05-06T23:27:26

In this week’s episode, we discuss bystander guilt, convergence, brain hacks and “how you can sneeze on someone’s brain from anywhere in the world”. How can GPs cope with the myriad worries around ...

Frontline stories - caring for non-covid patients from 2020-05-05T19:32:52

As the pandemic plays out - hospitals are reconfigured to increase critical care capacity, outpatient clinics become virtual, and elective procedures delayed. How are these affecting care for thos...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - lack of testing transparency, how to give good debate from 2020-05-04T16:25:18

For the next few months Talk Evidence is going to focus on the new corona virus pandemic. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty about the disease, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, treatme...

Wellbeing – how one junior doctor found a way to support frontline staff from 2020-04-29T17:17:18

How can we help frontline clinicians? Sometimes medics may feel uneasy or even guilty and that they could be doing more. That was what a junior doctor in Abergavenny in Wales felt and she did somet...

Public Health Vs The Economy from 2020-04-28T17:49:55

Around the world, as the covid pandemic plays out, and some countries are starting to ease their restrictions, this narrative of the economy and public health being opposing weights on a set of sca...

Frontline stories - working as a GP during covid from 2020-04-27T16:56:13

As the pandemic plays out - the way in which doctors in the UK practice is changing, hospitals are reconfigured to increase critical care capacity, GPs are working from home and doing their day to ...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - covid ethics, waste and a minimum RCT size from 2020-04-24T16:19:18

For the next few months Talk Evidence is going to focus on the new corona virus pandemic. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty about the disease, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, treatm...

Teleconsulting with Trish Greenhalgh and Fiona Stevenson from 2020-04-22T17:41:46

A new podcast from The BMJ, to help GP's feel more connected, heard, and supported. Subscribe on;Apple podcasts - https://bit.ly/applepodsDBI Spotify - https://bit.ly/spotifyDBIGoogle podcasts - h...

Feeling the fear with Iona Heath and Danielle Ofri from 2020-04-22T17:11:52

A new podcast from The BMJ, to help GP's feel more connected, heard, and supported. Subscribe on;Apple podcasts - https://bit.ly/applepodsDBI Spotify - https://bit.ly/spotifyDBIGoogle podcasts - h...

Wellbeing – advice from a military medic to frontline clinicians from 2020-04-22T11:53:26

There is no doubt that anxiety levels that clinicians are feeling during this pandemic are high. One military medic believes the current situation is comparable to his experience when posted duri...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - Remdesivir, care homes, and death data from 2020-04-17T15:00:49

For the next few months Talk Evidence is going to focus on the new corona virus pandemic. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty about the disease, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, treatm...

Wellbeing - some advice for telehealth in secondary care from 2020-04-16T18:30

We’ve published info on Telehealth in primary care - and have been overwhelmed by the response from GPs who are finding it useful. But it’s not only primary care that is dramatically shifting to ...

Front line stories - How corona is changing acute care from 2020-04-14T22:33:14

As we cover the covid-19 outbreak, we want to hear some of the stories from the frontline - And who better to heart of what this pandemic is doing to the profession in the UK, than some of the peop...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - hydroxy/chloroquinine, prognostic models and facemaskss from 2020-04-13T20:39:17

For the next few months Talk Evidence is going to focus on the new corona virus pandemic. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty about the disease, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, treat...

The public health response to covid - 19 from 2020-04-12T19:40:26

As part of our response to the covid-19 pandemic, we’re going to be running a series of discussions with experts about some of the big issues arising from the virus.In this one, we’re asking about ...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - pneumonia, guidelines, preprints and testing from 2020-04-09T09:53:16

For the next few months Talk Evidence is going to focus on the new corona virus pandemic. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty about the disease, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, treatm...

Wellbeing - Some advice on working in PPE from 2020-04-08T17:38:56

Wellbeing might not seem the obvious place to talk about PPE - but lack of appropriate PPE is causing healthcare staff a great deal of stress now. Mary Brindle is a pediatric surgeon and the direc...

Look after yourself during covid-19 from 2020-04-07T14:44:42

Continuing our series on wellbeing during the pandemic, in this podcast we speak to Occupational Psychologist Roxane Gervais about how doctors can look after themselves during the covid-19 pandemic...

WHO's response to covid-19 from 2020-04-05T17:01:53

We knew a pandemic was coming at some point - it’s kind of why we have the WHO. We have had various smaller scale tests of the international response to an infectious disease outbreak - Ebola in we...

Talk Evidence covid-19 update - Confused symptoms, fatality rate uncertainty, Iceland's testing from 2020-03-27T16:14:17

For the next few months Talk Evidence is going to focus on the new corona virus pandemic. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty about the disease, what the symptoms are, fatality rate, trea...

Organisational kindness during covid-19 from 2020-03-26T11:52:48

Reports from Italy, and more recently from the U.S. show the strain the healthcare system is under during this pandemic. We know that staff will step up in an emergency, but this isn’t a fire or ...

Talk Evidence - testing under the microscope and opioid prescription from 2020-03-20T20:08:10

This edition of talk evidence was recorded before the big increase in covid-19 infections in the UK, and then delayed by some self isolation. We'll be back with more evidence on the pandemic very s...

For a greener NHS - a call for evidence from 2020-03-14T12:46:26

The NHS is a world leader in sustainable healthcare - and it's the staff who have have been leading the charge. The For A Greener NHS campaign is asking everyone who has made a change to the way t...

Cycling - Does the health benefit outweigh the accident risk (in the UK) from 2020-03-12T16:22:11

We all know we should be doing more exercise, and one way to do that is by active commuting - journeying to work on foot or by bike. One thing preventing people from taking up cycling is the fear ...

Why we are failing patients with multimorbidity from 2020-03-05T14:54:02

We know that the number of people living with multiple health conditions is rising year on year, and yet training, guidelines, organisations and physical spaces in healthcare still largely focus on...

Yvonne Coghill is trying to fix racism in the NHS from 2020-02-28T11:59:19

In this week's special episode of Sharp Scratch, we've got something a little different for you! Last week the panel talked microaggressions, so this week we're hearing from an expert guest who is ...

Born equal - the launch of The BMJ special issue on race in medicine from 2020-02-21T18:18:08

Last week the BMJ published it’s first special edition into Racism in Medicine. The issues tacked ranged from differential attainment in medical school, to the physiological effects that experienci...

Talk Evidence - Building an evidence base for covid-19 from 2020-02-17T15:22:17

We're taking a break from the usual Talk Evidence to focus on the new corona virus that has emerged in China. With a brand new disease, we have to build our evidence base from scratch - basic viro...

David Williams - everyday discrimination is an independent predictor of mortality from 2020-02-13T12:44:12

There comes a tipping point in all campaigns when the evidence is overwhelming and the only way to proceed is with action. According to David Williams, it’s time to tackle the disproportionate effe...

Big Tan - Is the sunbed industry targeting research? from 2020-02-10T17:42:30

In 2012, Eleni Linos, professor of dermatology at Stanford university, published a systematic review and meta-analysis of the link between non-melanoma cancer and sun-beds. That bit of pretty stan...

Writing a good outpatient letter means addressing it to the patient from 2020-02-07T11:31:30

In many countries (including the UK and Australia) it is still common practice for hospital doctors to write letters to patients’ general practitioners (GPs) following outpatient consultations, and...

QI and improvement are not synonyms from 2020-01-31T18:17:26

In October 2019, Mary Dixon-Woods, director of the THIS Institute, dedicated to healthcare improvement. In that she explained how she believed healthcare improvement could be improved. The essay t...

Prevalence and treatment of precocious puberty from 2020-01-28T17:19:40

Precocious puberty, that is puberty that starts before age 8 in girls and 9 in boys seems to be on the rise, but whether that’s because of an increase in incidence, or greater attention is unknown ...

Talk Evidence - Sepsis, talc and blindsided by blinding from 2020-01-22T17:40:40

Welcome to the festive talk evidence, giving you a little EBM to take you into the new year. As always Duncan Jarvies is joined by Helen Macdonald (resting GP and editor at The BMJ) and Carl Henegh...

Surviving childhood cancer treatment from 2020-01-21T13:21:18

In a British cohort, 30% of patients who had survived childhood cancer had died within 45 years of diagnosis; only 6% were expected to have died. 51% had developed a new primary cancer, but a 26...

Is it possible to have fair pricing for medicines from 2020-01-17T17:50:54

Is it possible to have a fair price for medicines? Yes, according to a new collection just published on bmj.com. The authors set out to evaluate how we could improve the functioning of the market ...

Michael West - GMC Report On Wellbeing from 2020-01-10T15:02:33

Michael West is professor of organisational psychology, at Lancaster University, and co-author of a new GMC report into the wellbeing of NHS staff. The review he led together with the clinical psy...

From dance class to social prescription - starting and evaluating an idea from 2020-01-07T10:47:03

If you read the Christmas BMJ in the last few weeks, you might have noticed a lot around art and health - the way in which engagement in arts can help in prevention and treatment, but can also aff...

Editors pick of education in 2019 from 2020-01-03T14:58:44

If you’re lucky enough to not be back at work, you might be feeling like you need to quickly refresh your medical knowledge - and this podcast the BMJ’s education editors take you on a whistlestop...

Talk Xmas Evidence from 2019-12-31T14:52:53

Welcome to the festive talk evidence, giving you a little EBM to take you into the new year. As always Duncan Jarvies is joined by Helen Macdonald (resting GP and editor at The BMJ) and Carl Heneg...

The need for (psychiatrists') speed from 2019-12-20T16:22:37

The internecine takes on medical specialty are a common thread in the Christmas BMJ, and this year we're doing it through the lens of driving. Which speciality speeds the most, who has the nicest c...

Talking up your research - Sex makes a difference from 2019-12-20T15:50:09

As editors, we feel like we’re spending a lot of time taking the superlatives out from articles - amazing, novel, important… But new research on BMJ.com suggests that we might not be doing that gre...

Talk Evidence - digital clubbing, osteoarthritis & sustainable EBM from 2019-12-16T19:36:54

We’re back for the December Talk Evidence, and this month we’re being very digital Firstly,(1.20) Helen tells us about arthritic fingers - should we be using prednisolone for treatment when people...

Talk Evidence - Talking about harms from 2019-12-13T18:18:10

In this special edition of talk evidence, Helen Macdonald and Carl Henneghan talk about creating an evidence base from harms.

We hear from a member of the pubic who experienced harm from a drug, ...

Behind the campaign promises - Doctors in parliament from 2019-12-09T18:52:26

The UK general election is happening this week, and you’ve probably made your mind up which MP you’re voting for already - and maybe the NHS has influenced that decision. This year has seen an in...

Behind the campaign promises - what the NHS means for the election from 2019-12-05T19:09:30

UK general election has been called - polling day is on the 12th of December, and from now until then we’re going to be bringing you a weekly election-themed podcast. We want to help you make sens...

Behind the campaign promises - Health beyond the NHS from 2019-11-30T09:10:48

A UK general election has been called - polling day is on the 12th of December, and from now until then we’re going to be bringing you a weekly election-themed podcast. We want to help you make se...

Behind the campaign promises - Health and social care spending from 2019-11-22T16:21:30

A UK general election has been called - polling day is on the 12th of December, and from now until then we’re going to be bringing you a weekly election-themed podcast. We want to help you make se...

Behind the campaign promises - GP numbers, and appointment slots from 2019-11-15T16:59:59

A UK general election has been called - polling day is on the 12th of December, and from now until then we’re going to be bringing you a weekly election-themed podcast. We want to help you make s...

Reversing our preconceptions about where innovation comes from from 2019-11-14T16:51:19

Reverse innovation may sound like some attempt to return to the dark ages - but it has a specific meaning, especially when it comes to med-tech. It’s about where we look for innovation - and overtu...

Talk Evidence - aggravating acronyms, a time to prescribe, and screening (again) from 2019-11-11T11:51:44

Talk Evidence is back, with your monthly take on the world of EBM with Duncan Jarvies and GPs Carl Heneghan (also director for the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford) and...

Creating a speak out culture from 2019-11-07T17:00:38

Giving staff the confidence to speak out is important in healthcare - It's a key aspect of the WHO patient safety checklist, decreasing incidence of medical error, but it's also important to stop i...

Creating support for doctors in the NHS from 2019-11-05T10:50:47

The NHS Practitioner Health Programme - once only for doctors in London, now it’s being rolled out across the NHS to provide the largest, publicly funded, comprehensive physician health service, in...

Nudging the calories off your order from 2019-10-31T17:25:39

There has been a lot of noise made about calorie counts on labels - the idea being it’s one of those things that might nudge people to make healthier choices. So much so that in 2018, in the USA, ...

Testing for TB is only skin deep from 2019-10-25T18:36:01

A TB infection can take two forms, active and latent. Active disease is transmissible, and causes the damage to the lungs which makes TB one of the biggest killers in the world. In the latent form...

20 Arnav Agarwal from 2019-10-22T22:59:17

This week, Dr Arnav Agarwal joins Ray to share the perspective and experiences of a young, recently graduated doctor working in a busy, metropolitan hospital. Despite the long shifts and demandi...

19 Marion Nestle from 2019-10-22T22:30:59

This week, Ray ventures into the notoriously complex field of nutrition with special guest, Professor Marion Nestle. Named by Forbes as one of the world's most powerful foodies, Marion’s stellar...

Statins for primary prevention - How good is the evidence from 2019-10-21T10:12:15

Statins are now the most commonly used drug in the UK and one of the most commonly used medicines in the world, but debate remains about their use for primary prevention for people without cardiova...

Ancestry DNA tests can over or under estimate genetic disease risk from 2019-10-17T14:36:18

Direct-to-consumer genetic tests are sold online and in shops as a way to “find out what your DNA says". They insights into ancestry or disease risks; others claim to provide information on perso...

How Blockchain could improve clinical trial transparency from 2019-10-12T13:06:50

Blockchain is the digital technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and has been proposed as the digital panacea of our times. But Leeza Osipenko, from the London School of Econ...

A new way to look at behaviour change in UK GPs from 2019-10-08T14:52:42

In quality improvement, measurement is seen as a key driver of change - how well do you know you’re doing, if you can’t actually measure it. So, when something changes in the NHS (say a new guidel...

17 Liam Mannix from 2019-10-08T01:01:53

Our latest series kicks off with Australia’s multi-award-winning health and science reporter, Liam Mannix. He joins Ray to share his insights into the role and impact of evidence, advocacy and i...

Talk Evidence - eating less, drinking less, drug approval data from 2019-10-04T16:41:57

Talk Evidence is back, with your monthly take on the world of EBM with Duncan Jarvies and GPs Carl Heneghan (also director for the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford) and...

Minimum unit pricing in Scotland from 2019-09-26T17:47:38

On the 1st of May, 2018 Scotland was the first country to try a new way of reducing alcohol consumption in its population. It introduced a minimum unit prices for alcohol. Now new research just p...

Climate change will make universal health coverage precarious from 2019-09-24T14:26:52

The BMJ in partnership with The Harvard Global Health Institute has launched a collection of articles exploring how to achieve effective universal health coverage (UHC). The collection highlights t...

Talk Evidence - Recurrent VTE, CRP testing for COPD, CMO report, and a consultation from 2019-09-23T10:21:58

Helen talks about new research on prevention of recurrent VTE - and Carl things the evidence goes further, and we can extend prophylaxis for a year. 13.00 - CRP testing for antibiotic prescriptio...

Cancer drug trials used for regulatory approval are at risk of bias from 2019-09-19T14:09:14

Around half of trials that supported new cancer drug approvals in Europe between 2014 and 2016 were judged to be at high risk of bias, in a new study. Huseyin Naci,assistant professor of health p...

Brexit - Planning for medicine shortages from 2019-09-13T18:22:17

This week we saw the release of the much awaited Yellowhammer documents from the government, documents which outline some of the risks involved with Britain’s sudden departure from the EU. The docu...

Vaping deaths - does this change what we think about public health messages from 2019-09-12T16:58:18

This week the Trump administration has banned the sale of flavoured vapes in the USA. The reason for that is the sudden rash of cases of pulmonary disease, including deaths, linked to vaping. The ...

Extending the UK's sugar tax to snacks from 2019-09-06T11:54:58

In the UK, for just over a year, we've been paying the "Soft Drinks Industry Levy" - a tax on sugary beverages intended to reduce our consumption of free sugars. That was based on taxes that had h...

The government is lacking detail over Brexit planning from 2019-09-04T17:43:31

Brexit. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next few weeks, months, years - the uncertainty is high.In the face of that, you’d hope that the government was doing all it could to plan for any e...

Tackling burnout in The Netherlands from 2019-08-30T16:35:45

We heard a few podcasts ago about burnout - what it is, and why it should be thought of as a systems issue. Now a project in the Netherlands is trying to investigate who it is that is particularly ...

Physical activity and mortality - "The least active quartile did less than 5 minute per day" from 2019-08-23T14:29:32

We know that exercise is good for you - the WHO recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic physical activity each week. That recommendation i...

Talk Evidence - Tramadol, medical harm, and alexa from 2019-08-21T10:49:28

Welcome back to Talk Evidence - where Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan take you through what's happening in the world of Evidence. This month we'll be discussing tramadol being prescripted post...

Gottfried Hirnschall is optimistic about ending the HIV epidemic from 2019-08-15T16:45:11

In 2001, Gottfried Hirnschall joined the WHO to work on the global response to HIV/AIDs, 18 years later he just retired as the director of WHO’s department for HIV and Hepatitis. The intervening p...

Burnout - Don't try to make the canary in the coal mine more resilient from 2019-08-08T16:59:04

Burnout is a problem in healthcare - it’s a problem for individuals, those who experience it and decide to leave a career they formerly loved, but it’s also a problem for our healthcare system. Bur...

Sustainable health from 2019-08-02T16:49:08

The UK has just seen it’s hottest July on record, including the highest ever temperature recorded. With climate change in the forefront of our minds, it’s timely that we have two editorials on the...

Patient's rights in research - moving beyond participation from 2019-07-25T14:54:57

At EBM live recently, we ran a workshop with researchers, patients and clinicians to talk about patient rights in research - should patients be setting the full research agenda? Should they be full...

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome from 2019-07-19T15:47:49

Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome is a relatively newly recognised condition - but, according to one study, can account for up to 6% of patients presenting to emergency departments. The causal mec...

Fighting bad science in Austria from 2019-07-17T16:29:32

Cochrane Austria have been asking the public what they'd like to know about health. Not whether the latest drug is more efficacious, but whether glacier stone power cures hangovers. Gerald Gartleh...

Fertility awareness based methods for pregnancy prevention from 2019-07-13T17:38:01

Fertility awareness based methods of contraception are increasingly being used for pregnancy prevention. In the US, the proportion of contraceptive users who choose such methods has grown from 1% i...

Talk Evidence - smoking, gloves and transparency from 2019-07-10T11:11:50

This month we have some more feedback from our listeners (2.20) Carl says it's time to start smoking cessation (or stop the reduction in funding for smoking reduction) (11.40) and marvels at how p...

I have never encountered an organisation as vicious in its treatment of whistleblowers as the NHS from 2019-07-04T10:23:06

Margaret Heffernan has thought a lot about whistleblowing, and why companies don't respond well to it. She wrote the "Book Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril". In this podca...

After Grenfell from 2019-07-01T12:00:11

It's been just over two years since a fire broke out in Grenfell tower, in west London, claiming the lives of 72 residents. 223 people survived, thanks to the work of the fire brigade and health ca...

Talk Evidence - Z drugs, subclinical hypothyroidism and Drazen's dozen from 2019-06-25T16:58:44

This week on the podcast, (2.02) a listener asks, when we suggest something to stop, should we suggest an alternative instead? (8.24) Helen tells us to stop putting people on treatment for subclin...

Did international accord on tobacco reduce smoking? from 2019-06-20T10:51:30

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros recently said “Since it came into force 13 years ago, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control remains one of the world’s most powerful tools for promoting publi...

Working as a team, and combating stress, in space from 2019-06-18T15:04:19

Nicole Stott is an engineer, aquanaut and one of the 220 astronauts to have lived and worked on the International Space Station. In a confined space, under huge pressure, with no way out, it's imp...

Thoroughly and deliberately targeted; Doctors in Syria from 2019-06-14T18:08:51

As Syria enters its ninth year of conflict, doctors are struggling to provide health care to a badly damaged country. While dealing with medicine shortages, mass casualties and everything that com...

Planning for the unplannable from 2019-06-11T17:13:58

Hi impact, low probability events are a planners nightmare. You know that you need to think about them, but how can you prioritise which event - terrorist attack, natural disaster, disease outbreak...

What Matters To You Day from 2019-06-06T07:02:20

It's What Matters To You day - #wmty - and in this podcast Anya de Iongh, The BMJ's patient editor, and Joe Fraser, author of Joe's Diabetes who works at NHS England on personalised care, get toget...

Tech and the NHS - A tale of two cultures from 2019-06-03T17:31:28

The NHS is about caring for people, free at the point of care, creating a safety net which catches the most vulnerable. Tech has been defined by the facebook maxim "move fast, break things" - looki...

Finding out who funds patient groups from 2019-05-29T16:32:22

We’ve been banging the drum about transparency of payment to doctors for years - we’ve even put a moratorium on financial conflicts of interest in the authors of any of our education articles. Not ...

Talk Evidence - cancer causing food, prostate cancer and disease definitions from 2019-05-25T12:11:43

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. (1.05) Carl rants about bacon causing cancer(7.10) Helen talks about prostate ca...

What caused the drop in stroke mortality in the UK from 2019-05-23T10:12:07

Stroke mortality rates have been declining in almost every country, and that reduction could result from a decline in disease occurrence or a decline in case fatality, or both. Broadly - is that de...

Helping parents with children who display challenging behaviour from 2019-05-17T14:50:07

Looking after a young child is hard enough, but when that child has learning difficulties and displays challenging behaviour - the burden on parents can be extreme. That behaviour may prompt a vis...

Tackling gambling from 2019-05-10T14:38:04

In the UK we have a complex relationship with gambling, the government licences the national lottery, and uses profit from that to fund our art and museum sector - horse racing is a national TV eve...

The sex lives of married Brits from 2019-05-09T09:49:04

The National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles is a deep look into the sex lives of us brits - and has been running now for 30 years, giving us some longitudinal data about the way in whic...

Doctors and extinction rebellion from 2019-05-03T16:39:15

Starting in the middle of April, the group “Extinction Rebellion” have organised a series of non-violent direct action protests. Most notably bringing central London to a standstill - but these eve...

Introducing Sharp Scratch - our new podcast for students and junior doctors from 2019-04-26T16:22:39

Here's a taster for our new student podcast - Sharp Scratch. We're talking about the hidden curriculum, things you need to know to function as a doctor, but are rarely formally taught. This is a ...

Gypsy and Traveller health from 2019-04-24T14:15:08

In the UK, there's an ethnic group that is surprisingly large, but often overlooked by society, and formal healthcare services. The gypsy traveller community have poorer health outcomes because of ...

Could open access have unintended consequences? from 2019-04-19T11:43:04

An “author pays” publishing model is the only fair way to make biomedical research findings accessible to all, say David Sanders, professor of gastroenterology at Sheffield University, but James As...

Talk Evidence - health checks, abx courses and p-values from 2019-04-17T16:57:31

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. (1.20) Carl grinds his gears over general health checks, with an update in the C...

Capital punishment, my sixth great grandfather, and me from 2019-04-09T16:49:48

On the 7th of June, 1753, Dr Archibald Cameron was executed at Tyburn. "The body, after hanging twenty minutes, was cut down: it was not quartered; but the heart was taken out and burnt. " 250 yea...

How to have joy at work from 2019-04-05T15:56:02

Jessica Perlo is the Director for Joy at Work at the Institute for Healthcare Improverment, and James Mountford is direct or of quality at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. Together the...

Social prescribing from 2019-04-04T15:04:24

Non-medical interventions are increasingly being proposed to address wider determinants of health and to help patients improve health behaviours and better manage their conditions - this is known a...

Applying new power in medicine from 2019-04-01T11:41:04

Change requires the application of power - the way in which individuals can accrue power has shifted in our digitally connected world. Traditional ways of influencing change in healthcare (getting...

Talk Evidence - Shoulders, statins and doctors messes from 2019-03-28T08:37:29

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. They start by talking about shoulders - what does the evidence say about treatin...

Is opt-out the best way to increase organ donation? from 2019-03-22T16:43:46

As England’s presumed consent law for 2020 clears parliament, Veronica English, head of medical ethics and human rights at the BMA, say that evidence from Wales and other countries shows that it c...

An acutely disturbed person in the community from 2019-03-21T17:46:42

It can be difficult to know what to do when a person in severe psychological distress presents to a general practice or community clinic, particularly if they are behaving aggressively, or if they ...

Passing on the secret knowledge of loop diuretics from 2019-03-15T17:07:15

In every generation there are a few that know the secret; the counterintuitive effects of loop diuretics. In this podcast Steven Anisman, cardiologist at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Department of Car...

#talkaboutcomplications from 2019-03-14T15:25:27

Renza Scibilia and Chris Aldred have diabetes, and their introduction to the idea of complications arising from the condition were terrifying. Because of this early experience, and Chris's later d...

Ebola - Stepping up in Sierre Leone from 2019-03-08T16:36:33

In 2014, Oliver Johnson was a 28 year old British doctor, working on health policy in Sierre Leone after finishing medical school. Also working in Freetown was Sinead Walsh, then the Irish Ambassa...

Signals from the NIHR from 2019-03-07T18:02:07

If you've been keeping up to day with The BMJ - online on in print, you might have noticed that we've got a new type of article - NIHR Signals - and they are here to give busy clinicians a quick ov...

Nuffield 2019 - How can the NHS provide a fulfilling lifelong career from 2019-03-06T18:23:54

More doctors are choosing to retire early, doctors who take career breaks find it hard to return to practice, and doctors at all stages of their careers are frustrated by the lack of support given ...

Diabetes Insipidus - the danger of misunderstanding diabetes from 2019-03-01T18:10:43

Diabetes is synonymous with sugar, but diabetes insipidus, "water diabetes", can't be forgotten. Between 2009 and 2016, 4 people died in hospital in England, when lifesaving treatment for the condi...

Talk Evidence - Radiation, fertility, and pneumonia from 2019-02-27T09:54:48

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. They start by talking about how difficult a task it is to find evidence that's d...

Sorry for the interruption in service from 2019-02-22T15:58:39

The problem we had publishing our feed has been fixed, and normal service has resumed. Thank you for subscribing to the podcast, if you have thoughts you'd like to express, we'd love to hear them....

Safeguarding LGBT+ young people from 2019-02-15T19:33:41

Recent years have seen political and social progress for people who identify as LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender; the “+” indicating inclusion of other minority sexual and gender iden...

Should we be screening for AF? from 2019-02-14T17:38:45

Current evidence is sufficient to justify a national screening programme, argues Mark Lown clinical lecturer at the University of Southampton, but Patrick Moran, senior research fellow in health e...

Chronic Rhinosinusitis from 2019-02-08T13:58:35

Patients who experience chronic rhinosinusitis may way for a considerable period of time before presenting, because they believe the condition to be trivial.

In this podcast, Alam Hannan, ENT Con...

Assisted dying: should doctors help patients to die? from 2019-02-04T15:28:01

The Royal College of Physicians will survey all its members in February on this most controversial question. It says that it will move from opposition to neutrality on assisted dying unless 60% vot...

Goran Henriks - How an 80 year old woman called Esther shaped Swedish Healthcare from 2019-01-25T06:11:19

Jönköping has been at the centre of the healthcare quality improvement movement for years - but how did a forested region of Sweden, situated between it's main cities, come to embrace the philos...

Talk evidence - TIAs, aging in Japan and women in medicine from 2019-01-23T10:16:29

In this EBM round-up, Carl Heneghan, Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are back to give you an update Dual vs single therapy for prevention of TIA or minor stroke - how does the advice that dual...

HIV - everything you wanted to know about PeP and PreP from 2019-01-15T23:12:27

We have had two articles published recently on bmj.com, looking at drug prevention of HIV; PeP - Post-exposure Prophylaxis and PreP - Pre-exposure Prophylaxis, neither prevent the virus from enter...

Terence Stephenson - looking back at chairing the GMC from 2019-01-15T06:14:17

Terence Stephenson is a consultant paediatrician who became been chair of the General Medical Council in 2015. His 4 year tenure has now come to an end, but during his time with the regulator the...

How Coca-Cola shaped obesity science and policy in China from 2019-01-09T17:25:25

Susan Greenhalg is a research professor of chinese society in Harvard’s department of anthropology - not a natural fit for a medical journal you may think, but recently she has been looking at the...

Coding at Christmas from 2019-01-04T18:41:45

For many of you Christmas is over and, you’re back to work. Admin piled up over christmas? Feeling resentful for all those forms, and the weird codes they make you put in them? In this podcast I h...

Women in medicine at Christmas from 2018-12-21T15:44:51

2018 will go down in history as a year of reckoning as the year that that some men’s behaviour came back to bite them. The continuing impact of #MeToo across the world has prompted another round of...

Christmas Food 2018 from 2018-12-16T13:12:07

the Christmas BMJ season is upon us - if you’re to go to our website now, you’ll see that it’s been a bumper year. In the podcast, we’re going to be bringing you a select few - we’ll be looking at ...

Talk Evidence - Devices and facebook vaccines from 2018-12-12T11:11:18

In the second of our EBM round-ups, Carl Heneghan, Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are joined by Deborah Cohen, investigative journalistand scourge of device manufacturers. We're giving our ve...

Making multisectoral collaboration work from 2018-12-07T22:30:54

A new collection of articles published by The BMJ includes twelve country case studies, each an evaluation of multisectoral collaboration in action at scale on women’s, children’s, and adolescent’s...

Trojan Milk from 2018-12-05T19:23:58

Infant formula manufacturers were made pariah in the 70s, because of their marketing practices - this lead to “The Code”, adopted by the WHO, which set out clear guidelines about what those practic...

The bone crushing nausea of hyperemesis from 2018-12-01T11:40:56

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy affects around 70% of pregnancies. It is mild for around 40% of women, moderate for 46%, and severe for 14%. By contrast, hyperemesis gravidarum is a complication ...

God is in Operating Room 4 from 2018-11-27T17:30:38

Healthy self confidence has an important role in surgery, but what came first - the surgeon or the ego? In this conversation, Christopher Myers, Yemeng Lu-Myers, and Amir Ghaferi join us to talk a...

Carers need a voice in the NHS from 2018-11-22T17:05

Until recently, The BMJ had a campaign of patient partnership - now we have a patient and public partnership campaign. The reason for that change is that medicine has an effect beyond the individua...

Acceptable, tolerable, manageable - but not to patients. How drug trials report harms. from 2018-11-19T18:02:11

You’ll have read in a clinical trial “Most patients had an acceptable adverse-event profile.” Or that a drug “has a manageable and mostly reversible safety profile.” And that “the tolerability was ...

Talk evidence - Vitamin D, Oxygen and ethics from 2018-11-16T11:30:56

Welcome to this, trial run, of a new kind of BMJ podcast - here we’re going to be focusing on all things EBM. Duncan Jarvies, Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan - and occasional guests- will be ba...

Adverse drug reactions from 2018-11-06T15:53:33

Clinical trials for regulatory approval are designed to test efficacy, but new drugs might have adverse reactions - reactions those trials aren’t designed to spot. To talk about those adverse reac...

HAL will see you now from 2018-11-05T14:17:12

Machines that can learn and correct themselves already perform better than doctors at some tasks, but not all medicine is task based - but will AI doctors ever be able to have a therapeutic relatio...

How much oxygen is too much oxygen? from 2018-11-01T18:05:18

As the accompanying editorial to this article says, "oxygen has long been a friend of the medical profession Even old friendships require reappraisal in the light of new information." And that’s w...

How does lifestyle affect genetic risk of stroke? from 2018-10-30T13:35:23

Cardiovascular factors are associated with risk of stroke - and those factors can be mediated by lifestyle and by genetic make up. New research published by The BMJ sets out to explore how these r...

Talking honestly about intensive care from 2018-10-26T19:35:20

On the podcast, we’ve talked a lot about the limits of medicine - where treatment doesn’t work, or potentially harms. But in that conversation, we’ve mainly focused on specific treatments. Now a n...

Nasal symptoms of the common cold from 2018-10-14T14:52:55

The common cold is usually mild and self limiting - but they’re very annoying, especially the runny nose and bunged up feeling that form the nasal symptoms. A new practice article, published on BM...

What's it like to live with a vaginal mesh? from 2018-10-12T16:52:37

What can we learn from the shameful story of vaginal mesh? That thousands of women have been irreversibly harmed; that implants were approved on the flimsiest of evidence; that surgeons weren’t ade...

How to taper opioids from 2018-10-11T08:10:59

There is very little guidance on withdrawing or tapering opioids in chronic pain (not caused by cancer). People can fear pain, withdrawal symptoms, a lack of social and healthcare support, and they...

The counter intuitive effect of open label placebo from 2018-10-06T10:42:16

Ted Kaptchuk, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical school - and leading placebo researcher, has just published an analysis on bmj.com describing the effect of open label placebo - placebos that...

Vinay Prasad - there is overdiagnosis in clinical trials from 2018-10-03T17:11:07

We want clinical trials to be thorough - but Vinay Prasad, assistant professor of medicine at Oregon Health Science University, argues that the problem of overdiagnosis may be as prevalent, in the ...

UK children are drinking less and the importance of a publicly provided NHS from 2018-09-28T18:36:43

Brits have a reputation as Europe’s boozers - and for good reason, with alcohol consumption higher than much of the rest of the continent. That reputation is extended to our young people too - but...

Don't save on transport at the cost of the NHS from 2018-09-24T10:49:38

Last week we heard about how evidence in policy making is imperilled - but today we’re hearing about a plan to make evidence about health central to all aspects of government. Laura Webber, direct...

15 Iona Heath from 2018-09-18T04:16:16

This week a very different kind of conversation on the Recommended Dose – one that considers the art of medicine more than the science. Iona Heath is a long-time family doctor who has worked in ...

Defending evidence informed policy making from ideological attack from 2018-09-17T16:00:21

If you’re of a scientific persuasion, watching policy debates around Brexit, or climate change, or drug prohibition are likely to cause feelings of intense frustration about the dearth of evidence ...

How often do hospital doctors change long term medication during an inpatient stay? from 2018-09-14T18:00:24

More than ½ of patients leave hospital with changes to four or more of their long-term medications - but how appropriate are those changes? New research published on bmj.com looks at antihyperten...

Nutritional science - Is quality more important than quantity? from 2018-09-07T17:39:13

We at The BMJ care about food, and if our listener stats are to be believed, so do you.In this podcast we’re looking at quality as an important driver of a good diet. At our recent food conference ...

Preventing Overdiagnosis 2018 - part 2: What opened your eyes to overdiagnosis? from 2018-08-31T18:27:16

The concept of overdiagnosis is pretty hard to get - especially if you’ve been educated in a paradigm where medicine has the answers, and it’s only every a positive intervention in someone’s life -...

Preventing overdiagnosis 2018 - Part 1 from 2018-08-24T15:02:10

This week saw the latest Preventing Overdiagnosis conference - this time in Copenhagen. The conference is a is a forum where researchers and practitioners can present examples of overdiagnosis - a...

Have we misunderstood TB's timeline? from 2018-08-23T09:46:24

The number of people estimated to be latently infected with TB - that is infected with TB, which has not yet manifested symptoms - is around 2 billion. That is 1 in 3 people on the planet are infe...

13 Iain Chalmers from 2018-08-22T07:50:10

This week, a very special conversation with a maverick British medico who set up a tiny research centre in Oxford and watched it grow into a global collaboration of over 40,000 people across 130 co...

The diagnosis and treatment of dyspareunia from 2018-08-13T17:16:01

Dyspareunia is a common but poorly understood problem affecting around 7.5% of sexually active women. It is an important and neglected area of female health, associated with substantial morbidity a...

Patient information is key to the therapeutic relationship from 2018-08-10T11:13:41

Sue Farrington is chair of the Patient Information Forum, a member organisation which promotes best practice in anyone who produces information for patients. In this podcast, she discusses what ma...

15 seconds to improve your workplace from 2018-07-27T16:23:56

15s30m is a social movement to reduce frustration & increase joy - the idea is to spend 15 seconds of your time now, and save someone else 30 minutes down the line.

To talk about their mov...

Mendelian Randomisation - for the moderately intelligent from 2018-07-16T18:47:48

Mendelian randomisation - it’s a technique that uses the chance distribution of genes in a population, combined with big data sets, to investigate causative relationships.

But there are a ...

What does the public think of the NHS? from 2018-07-12T17:02:32

It’s been quite a year for the NHS - it just turned 70, had a winter crisis like never before, got over junior doctor strikes, but then was hit by a series of scandals about breast screening, and n...

10 Rita Redberg from 2018-07-12T05:48:43

This week influential Editor-in-Chief of JAMA Internal Medicine Dr Rita Redberg joins Ray for a wide ranging conversation on all things health. A Professor at the University of California San Franc...

Doctors and vets working together for antibiotic stewardship from 2018-07-11T15:00:36

Doctors and the farming industry are often blamed for overuse of antibiotics that spurs the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance - but the professions are using different methods to combat r...

James Munro cares about patients opinions. from 2018-07-05T18:00:39

Getting feedback from people who use NHS services is essential to
assessing their value - and improving their quality. Hospitals and general practices widely post information about patient's...

Your recommended dose of Ray Moynihan from 2018-06-28T14:22:05

Ray Moynihan is a senior research assistant at Bond University, a journalist, champion of rolling back too much medicine, and host of a new series “The Recommended Dose” from Cochrane Australia. ...

Evidence in a humanitarian emergency from 2018-06-25T09:52:03

At evidence live this year, one of the sessions was about the work of Evidence Aid - and their attempt to bring high quality evidence to the frontline of a humanitarian crisis.

In that situation,...

When an investigative journalist calls from 2018-06-22T17:11:23

At Evidence Live this year, the focus of the conference was on communication of evidence - both academically, and to the public. And part of that is the role that investigative journalism has to pl...

Darknet Opioids from 2018-06-15T09:07:22

When tackling societal problems - like the opioid epidemic in the US - there are two ways of approaching it. One is to reduce demand - by organising treatment programmes, or reducing the underlying...

09 John Ioannidis from 2018-06-15T02:09:01

Series two of The Recommended Dose kicks off with polymath and poet, Dr John Ioannidis. Recognised by The Atlantic as one the most influential scientists alive today, he’s a global authority on gen...

Ashish Jha tries to see the world as it is. from 2018-06-08T17:02:48

There’s a lot going on in the world at the moment - Ebola’s back, Puerto Rico is without power and the official estimations of death following the hurricane are being challenged. The WHO’s just met...

Biochem for kids from 2018-05-25T17:24:10

Each time you order a test for a child, do you think the population that makes up the baseline against which the results are measured? It turns out that that historically those reference intervals...

Antidepressants and weight gain from 2018-05-25T16:56:21

Patients who are depressed and prescribed antidepressants may report weight gain, but there has been limited research into the association between the two. However new observational research publis...

New antivirals for Hepatitis C - what does the evidence prove? from 2018-05-12T11:44:15

There’s been a lot of attention given to the new antirviral drugs which target Hepatitis C - partly because of the burden of infection of the disease, and the lack of a treatment that can be made e...

Big Metadata from 2018-05-04T17:09:15

We’re in an era of big data - and hospitals and GPs are generating an inordinate amount of it that has potential to improve everyone’s health. But only if it’s used properly. New research published...

Can we regulate intellectual interests like financial ones? from 2018-04-13T19:07:09

We talk about financial conflicts of interest a lot atThe BMJ - and have take taken the decision that our educational content should be without them.We also talk a lot about non-financial conflicts...

Civilians under siege in Eastern Ghouta from 2018-04-03T10:03:35

In 2016, from an estimated pre-war population of 22 million, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance, of which more than 6 million are internally d...

Online Consultations - general practice is primed for a fight from 2018-03-28T17:28:48

The first digital banking in the UK was launched in 1983, Skype turns 15 this year, but 2017 finally saw panic over the impact that online consultations may have on general practices.

In t...

How to stop generic drug price hikes (or at least reduce them) from 2018-03-23T16:27:36

Ravi Gupta, is a resident in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore - and as he said has seen the influence of sudden price hikes on his patients - between 2010 and 2015 more than 300 drug...

Unprofessionalism - "blaming other people, I put that at the top of the impact list" from 2018-03-12T12:16:34

That’s Jo Shapiro is a surgeon and manager in Brigham and Women’s hospital, she’s also director of the Center for Professionalism and Peer Support, and has written an editorial for The BMJ on tack...

Katherine Cowan - Reaching A Priority from 2018-03-02T15:59:43

Its now widely agreed that one of the key ways of reducing the current high level of "waste " in biomedical research is to focus it more squarely on addressing the questions that matter to pati...

SDGs - How many lives are at stake? from 2018-02-17T12:58:17

In a new analysis John McArthur and Krista Rasmussen, from the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution, and Gavin Yamey from Duke University, have set out to analyse th...

"We don't really know the impact of these products on our health": Ultraprocessed food & cancer risk from 2018-02-15T10:47:09

A study published by The BMJ today reports a possible association between intake of highly processed (“ultra-processed”) food in the diet and cancer. Ultra-processed foods include packaged baked ...

How does it feel, to help your patient die? from 2018-02-08T12:55

Sabine Netters is an oncologist in The Netherlands - where assisted dying is legal. There doctors actually administer the drugs to help their patients die (unlike proposed legislation in the UK). Listen

The tone of the debate around assisted dying from 2018-02-08T11:47:22

Bobbie Farsides is professor of clinical and biomedical ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She’s been described as one of the few people that is acceptable to “both sides” of the assiste...

Smoking one a day can't hurt, can it? from 2018-01-25T14:59:12

We know that smoking 20 cigarettes a day increases your risk of CHD and stroke - but what happens if you cut down to 1, do you have 1/20th of that risk? Allan Hackshaw, professor of epidemiology a...

Virginia Murray - the science of disaster risk reduction from 2018-01-24T10:42:11

Virginia Murray, public health consultant in global disaster risk reduction at Public Health England, was instrumental in putting together the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction - an inte...

Education round-up - January 2018 from 2018-01-22T17:30:44

The BMJ publishes a variety of education articles, to help doctors improve their practice. Often authors join us in our podcast to give tips on putting their recommendations into practice. In this...

They can't hear you - how hearing loss can affect care. from 2018-01-19T13:31:52

Many older adults have difficulty understanding speech in acute healthcare settings owing to hearing loss, but the effect on patient care is often overlooked.

Jan Blustein professor of hea...

MVA85A trial investigation - press conference. from 2018-01-11T18:34:38

Trial MVA85A - monkey trials for a booster vaccine for BCG, developed by researchers at Oxford University, is the subject of an investigation published on bmj.com. Experts warn that today’s invest...

neoadjuvant treatment for breast cancer - not living up to the promise from 2018-01-11T18:07:35

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer is a new strategy that was introduced towards the end of the 20th century with the aim of reducing tumour size - rendering an otherwise inoperable tumour ...

Winter pressures - "You run the risk of dropping the ball" from 2018-01-10T17:35:17

Winter pressures on NHS services have kicked in a little bit earlier than usual. So here to discuss that, and also the issue of how local NHS leaders can support staff in times of extreme pressure....

Suspect, investigate, and diagnose acute respiratory distress syndrome from 2018-01-03T14:42:46

Acute respiratory distress syndrome was first described in 1967 and has become a defining condition in critical care. Around 40% of patients with ARDS will die, and survivors experience long term s...

Taking the temperature of 37°C from 2017-12-13T17:00:09

Average body temperature is 37°C, right? That was the conclusion of Carl Wunderlich in his magnum opus, The Course of Temperature in Diseases - Wunderlich published that in 1868, following his ex...

Manflu - are men immunologically inferior? from 2017-12-12T16:26:51

Manflu, the phenomenon that men experience the symptoms of viral illness more than woman, is usually used with derision - but a new review, published in the Christmas edition, is asking - is there ...

I thought I wasn't thin enough to be anorexic from 2017-12-10T17:57:03

Assessing young people with possible eating disorders can be complex for a variety of reasons. Building a therapeutic relationship with a young person with a possible eating disorder and their fami...

Early detection of eating disorders from 2017-12-10T16:56:04

Assessing young people with possible eating disorders can be complex for a variety of reasons. Building a therapeutic relationship with a young person with a possible eating disorder and their fami...

Three talks to good decision making from 2017-11-10T18:59:32

The Three Talk Model of shared decision is a framework to help clinicians to think about how to structure their consultation to ensure that shared decision making can most usefully take place.
...

Money for editors from 2017-10-27T16:45:53

As journal editors, we’re aware of the fact that we have a role to play in scientific discourse - that’s why The BMJ has been so keen to talk about the way in which scientific knowledge is construc...

Exercise in old age - "we need kendo classes in Huddersfield" from 2017-10-18T18:24:10

There's a crisis in old age care - not just in the UK, around the world, as population demographics shift, and the proportion of older people increase - there's a worry about who's going to look af...

Telephone consultations - no cost savings, but increased GP workload from 2017-09-28T15:02:02

If you're a patient in the UK, increasingly, your first interaction with the healthcare system won't be the traditional face to fact chat with your doctor - instead you'll have a telephone consulta...

Selling off NHS silver? from 2017-09-27T16:04:41

Should we welcome plans to sell off NHS land? The government seems likely to back the recommendations of Robert Naylor (national adviser on NHS property and estates) to raise capital by selling of...

What Choosing Wisely looks like in the UK from 2017-09-27T10:36:30

Choosing Wisely was launched in the US, to much fanfare. Since then the movement has spread around the world, with successful chapters set up in Canada, Australia Brazil, Italy, Japan, new Zealand ...

Diabetes remission - "treating blood glucose, when the disease process is to do with body fat" from 2017-09-22T15:25:47

In the UK - type 2 diabetes now affects between 5-10% of the population - and accounts for around 10% of our total NHS budget. For the individuals affected, treatments are effective at helping con...

The problems with peer review from 2017-09-19T14:10:31

One of the hurdles that anyone who submits research or analysis to The BMJ has to deal with is peer review. The problems of the process, and some of the potential solutions, was a big part of the...

HIV in pregnancy - "without the big picture, people aren't going to be able to take the medication" from 2017-09-15T17:11:27

A new Rapid Recommendation from The BMJ suggests that for pregnant women, they may wish to avoid certain antiviral treatments for HIV. This recommendation differs from the WHO's, and to discuss w...

Nigel Crisp - The NHS isn't just a cost to society, it's a benefit from 2017-09-08T17:18:17

If you google "The NHS" you'll see screaming headlines from the Daily Mail about cost and waste - debate in parliament is about how much of our GDP we should be spending - and each year, hospital t...

The World Bank - Universal Healthcare from 2017-09-01T11:01:34

The world bank was set up in 1944. In the aftermath of the second world war, the institution was there to give loans to countries rebuilding after the conflict. Their first loan went to France - bu...

The World Bank - the Global Financing Facility from 2017-09-01T09:05:03

The world bank was set up in 1944. In the aftermath of the second world war, the institution was there to give loans to countries rebuilding after the conflict. Their first loan went to France - bu...

The World Bank - trust funds from 2017-09-01T09:03:51

The world bank was set up in 1944. In the aftermath of the second world war, the institution was there to give loans to countries rebuilding after the conflict. Their first loan went to France - bu...

The World Bank - why it matters for global health from 2017-09-01T08:59:54

The world bank was set up in 1944. In the aftermath of the second world war, the institution was there to give loans to countries rebuilding after the conflict. Their first loan went to France - bu...

Preventing Overdiagnosis 2017 - Citizen juries from 2017-08-19T19:27:30

This week we’re at the over diagnosis conference in Quebec Canada, Preventing overdiangosis is a forum to discuss the harms associated with using uncertain methods to look for disease in apparentl...

Preventing Overdiagnosis 2017 - Stacy Carter on the culture of overmedicalisation from 2017-08-17T18:17:17

In this interview from Preventing Overdiagnosis 2017 (preventingoverdiagnosis.net) Stacy Carter, associate professor at Sydney Health Ethics - and the author of a recently written BMJ essay the et...

Helping Bereaved people from 2017-08-03T15:11:16

Loss of a loved one can be very painful. When seeking support, some people turn to their doctor. Because of their pivotal role in the community, physicians can provide excellent support for bereave...

Mike Richards has "never been politically interfered with" from 2017-07-28T13:43:03

Mike Richards is well known in the UK - former Cancer Tzar, he now heads up the Care Quality Commission - regulator of all health and social care services, and therefore the body responsible for in...

"For the first time in 15 years the quitting rate has gone up" - ecigarettes smoking cessation from 2017-07-27T12:54:03

It’s been 10 years since electronic cigarettes hit the shelves in a big way - and since there controversy has reigned about their health effects - are they less unhealthy than smoking traditional t...

What's going on with life expectancy? from 2017-07-21T15:35:10

The increase in life expectancy in England has almost “ground to a halt” since 2010 and austerity measures are likely to be a significant contributor.

In this podcast Michael Marmot, direc...

Biomarkers - miracle or marketing? from 2017-07-18T18:20:32

The BMJ has been campaigning for an end to “too much medicine” - the pernicious effect of marketing on the range of tests and treatments that doctors offer patients - tests and treatments which are...

James Kinross and Chris Hankin WannCry about NHS IT from 2017-07-14T16:13:20

Earlier this year, the WannaCry ransomeware attack took control of computers in 40 NHS trusts, blocking access to the data held on them.

This wasn’t the first time that NHS computers had b...

Dementia prevalance in 2040 from 2017-07-05T17:07:08

The Alzheimer’s society, in the UK, predicts that if the rates of dementia remain constant there’ll be 1.7 million people in the country living with the condition by 2050. We also know that things ...

The Evidence Manifesto - it's time to fix the E in EBM from 2017-06-23T17:06:38

"Too many research studies are poorly designed or executed. Too much of the resulting research evidence is withheld or disseminated piecemeal. As the volume of clinical research activity has grown ...

Stress at work from 2017-06-16T17:59:27

Stress is one of the leading causes of work absence, recently overtaking back-pain, and an increasing part of a GPs workload. However good quality evidence about how to deal with stress is hard to ...

"The interest of diesel drivers over the interest of the public" - tackling air pollution from 2017-06-15T16:47:27

Air pollution is a truly damaging environmental insult to the human body. The numbers of premature deaths, in the UK alone, that can be attributed to it are calculated to be 40,000 a year.
Listen

How to build a resillient health system from 2017-06-08T11:02:37

The 2014 west African Ebola epidemic shone a harsh light on the health systems of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. While decades of domestic and international investment had contributed to substa...

Future Earth - linking health and environmental research from 2017-06-02T15:02:50

The rapid changes in the global environment have led many scientists to conclude that we are living in a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—in which human activities have become the dominant dri...

Government and evidence from 2017-06-02T14:58:59

We're creating a manifesto for better evidence. The centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, and the BMJ, are asking what are the problem with medical evidence, and how can w...

The magic of shared decision making from 2017-05-09T09:48:25

Adoption of shared decision making into routine practice has been remarkably slow, despite 40 years of research and considerable policy support. In 2010, the Health Foundation in the UK commissio...

The evidence manifesto - better trials, better use of trial data from 2017-04-21T17:48:21

We're creating a manifesto for better evidence. The centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, and the BMJ, are asking what are the problem with medical evidence, and how can ...

Assessing and treating an electrical injury from 2017-04-13T17:14:37

Thankfully, electrical injuries are relatively uncommon - but that means that lack of evidence regarding the management of patients who have been electrocuted, which can cause concern for clinician...

"We're kicking the can down the road" - how to get agreement on the future of the NHS from 2017-04-12T16:54:57

Our latest debate asks whether there should be a Royal Commission (a high level enquiry, with statutory powers) into the future of the NHS.

A high level inquiry could detoxify the radical ...

Fighting inequality, corruption, and conflict - how to improve South Asia's health from 2017-04-11T15:29:46

The BMJ has published a series of articles, taking an in-depth look at health in South Asia. In this collection, authors from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan collabor...

High integrity child mental healthcare from 2017-04-06T14:54:29

Around 1 in 10 children and young people worldwide have mental health difficulties that substantially affect their lives.

Child mental health services often concentrate on risk reduction, ...

American healthcare - what next? from 2017-03-29T09:10:02

For seven years, Republicans have vowed to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare), and that promise took a central place in President Trump's campaign. The first major vote to replace it ...

Education round up - HIV testing, legal highs and care for relatives of the dying from 2017-03-17T15:44:23

The BMJ publishes a lot of educational articles, and in an attempt to help you with your CPD, we have put together this round-up. Our authors and editors will reflect on the key learning points in...

Identifying a viral rash in pregnancy from 2017-03-17T15:33:02

Viral exanthema can cause rash in a pregnant woman and should be considered even in countries that have comprehensive vaccination programmes. Measles and rubella can cause intrauterine death. Intr...

Nuffield Summit 2017 - Reducing Demand from 2017-03-16T13:47:20

As the NHS strains under pressure from rising patient activity, an ageing population, and financial constraints, The BMJ hosted a discussion on how clinicians should be helping to manage demand at ...

Emergency care plans at the end of life from 2017-03-08T17:48:04

When a person’s heart or breathing stops and the cause is reversible, immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) offers a chance of life. However, when a person is dying—for example, from organ ...

Palliative care is about life, not death from 2017-03-03T18:04:51

Scott Murray, professor of primary palliative care at the University of Edinburgh, has written, and talked in this podcast before, about the benefits of early palliative care - and today he’s back ...

The inadequacy of the UK's childhood obesity strategy from 2017-03-02T17:39:18

The UK government published its report Childhood Obesity: a Plan for Action, in August 2016. A new analysis article takes them to task for the inadequacy of that response to a growing problem. Nee...

How people die remains in the memory of those who live on - supporting the relatives of the dying from 2017-02-21T11:00:38

All doctors, irrespective of their specialty or the setting in which they work, will care for patients who die. Around half of all deaths occur in hospitals. Evidence suggests that the quality of ...

Helping patients with medically unexplained symptoms from 2017-02-17T17:59:25

Persistent physical symptoms are common and include those symptoms that last at least three months and are insufficiently explained by a medical condition after adequate examination and investigati...

Should all American doctors be using electronic medical records? from 2017-01-19T17:40:39

Evidence shows using electronic health records can increase efficiency, and reduce preventable medical errors - but only if they are used properly. However, in the US, the president of the American...

Surrogate outcomes distorting medicine from 2017-01-06T18:47:05

Surrogate endpoints are commonly used in clinical trials to get quicker results, however Michael Baum, emeritus professor at University College London, worries that by not focusing on real outcomes...

Christmas 2016 - Health and happiness from 2016-12-21T12:59:28

Underneath all of our civilisation and science, we’re still primates - and the connection between patient and doctor can be reinforced by simply taking a hand.

Robin Youngson, cofounder of...

Christmas 2016 - ideologies and moralities from 2016-12-16T18:10:32

In an ideal world, policies would be evidence based - but governments are made of humans, who have positions and ideologies and moral bases. In this podcast Anthony Painter, from the RSA will be ...

Margaret McCartney wants to fix the NHS from 2016-11-28T17:15:18

Glasgow GP, writer, broadcaster, and The BMJ's weekly columnist Margaret McCartney joins us to talk about her new book "The State of Medicine: Keeping the Promise of the NHS".

Read all of ...

Evidence for vitamin D supplimentation from 2016-11-25T17:15:14

Despite high quality systematic reviews reporting ineffectiveness, many guideline groups continue to recommend vitamin D supplementation (with or without calcium) for fall or fracture prevention. R...

Blinding the randomisation from 2016-11-18T15:58:27

Allocation concealment - blinding which arm of a trial a patient is randomised to - is being questioned in an analysis published on thebmj.com. David Torgerson, director of the York Trials Unit at...

Advertising junk food to children from 2016-11-04T17:18:13

In the UK, junk food advertising is banned on children’s TV - but manufactures are still able to target children in other ways.  A recent report from the WHO  "Tackling food marketing to children i...

Middle East respiratory syndrome from 2016-10-21T17:25:24

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is an acute viral respiratory tract infection caused by the novel betacoronavirus.

Cases have been limited to the Arabian Peninsula and its surroun...

Reprehensible, but the people carrying out atrocities have very low rates of mental disorders from 2016-09-08T14:46:46

Oversimplification and lack of evidence stigmatise people with mental illness and impede prevention efforts, says Simon Wessley, professor of psychiatry at King's College London, in an editorial pu...

Late effects of anticancer chemotherapy: It's hard to trust your body, after it's betrayed you from 2016-09-08T13:30:40

Lily was diagnosed at 14 years old with stage four Hodgkin's lymphoma and received six rounds of chemotherapy and two weeks of radiotherapy. She survived but now lives with the long term effects of...

Not just our ethical credibility as a profession, but our shared humanity from 2016-08-30T10:30:57

"I say to all Australian doctors - young, old, the political and the apolitical - that on this depends not just our ethical credibility as a profession, but our shared humanity. " Following the le...

A maladaptive pathway to drug approval from 2016-08-19T14:04:41

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has embraced a new model of drug testing and marketing called “adaptive pathways”, allowing new drugs for “unmet medical needs” to be launched on the market fast...

Likelihood ratios in diagnostic tests from 2016-08-16T15:24:50

Andrew Elder, a professor at the University of Edinburgh talks about likelihood ratios in diagnostic testing, and how they’re helpful in thinking about how context changes the predictive value of a...

How does maximizing shareholder value distort drug development? from 2016-07-28T11:01:43

With the emergence of sofobuvir, a new direct acting antiviral, treatment for Hepatitis C infection is currently undergoing it's greatest change since the discovery of the virus 25 years ago.
<...

What went wrong with care.data? from 2016-07-22T18:20

Failures in implementation of data sharing projects have eroded public trust.

In the wake of NHS England’s decision to close down its care.data programme, Tjeerd-Pieter van Staa professor ...

You've been ICE'd from 2016-07-22T11:24:02

We’re taught that patients' ideas, concerns, and expectations are central to a successful consultation, but has ICEing gone too far? A “What your patient is thinking” article published this week t...

Should we scrap the internal market in England's NHS from 2016-07-15T15:45:11

The "internal market" was created after the 1987 UK general election focused attention on inadequate funding in the NHS, long waiting lists for elective surgery, and large unwarranted variations in...

Having hip osteoarthritis from 2016-07-08T18:25:01

2.46 million people in England have osteoarthritis of the hip, and many of those go on to eventually have a hip replacement - which is now widely considered one of the most commonly performed and s...

Treating hip osteoarthritis from 2016-07-08T16:26

2.46 million people in England have osteoarthritis of the hip, and many of those go on to eventually have a hip replacement - which is now widely considered one of the most commonly performed and s...

Julia Beluz And Victor Montori - Journalists And doctors; separated by a common evidence from 2016-06-23T15:52:37

The same piece of evidence may reach you via a journalist, or via your doctor - but the way in which that evidence is communicated is changed by your relationship between that person.

Julia Beluz...

Caring for patients with delirium at the end of their life from 2016-06-14T16:15:33

Delirium is common in the last weeks or days of life. It can be distressing for patients and those around them. A clinical update explains why successful management involves excluding reversible ca...

"What has convinced me is the evidence" - why mandatory treatment for drug use is a bad idea from 2016-06-10T15:07:07

Global evidence indicates that mandated treatment of drug dependence conflicts with drug users’ human rights and is not effective in treating addiction. Karsten Lunze, associate professor at the ...

Tell me a story from 2016-06-03T15:22:35

How can asking patient to tell us their story improve healthcare? Helen Morant, content lead at BMJ, talks us through her project getting healthcare professionals to sit down with patients and reco...

Women and the Zika Virus from 2016-05-25T11:01:18

Interviews from the Women deliver conference in Copenhagen.

Donna McCarraher, director of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health at FHI 360, explains why women should be at the centre o...

"Women deliver, and not only babies" from 2016-05-16T10:34:24

Katja Iversen, CEO of Women Deliver, joins Rebecca Coombes to explain why the UN sustainable development goals are unachievable if we don't empower women and girls to take control of their health, ...

Travellers' diarrhoea from 2016-05-13T15:23:21

Travellers’ diarrhoea is one of the most common illnesses in people who travel internationally, and depending on destination affects 20-60% of the more than 800 million travellers each year. In mos...

"The information we get can be harmfull"; Informed consent is not a panacea from 2016-05-09T19:01:43

Providing information to enable informed choices about healthcare sounds immediately appealing to most of us.

But Minna Johansson, GP trainee and PhD student at the University of Gothenbu...

The science of improvement from 2016-05-06T15:50:16

Or, the one where Fiona Moss and Don Berwick tells us what they think quality improvement is. Fiona Moss is dean, Royal Society of Medicine, and Don Berwick is president emeritus and senior fellow...

Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US from 2016-05-04T09:29:03

Medical error is not included on death certificates or in rankings of cause of death. Martin Makary, professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, joins us to explain why we ...

BMJ roundtable: How to fix out of hours care from 2016-04-27T14:39:06

The BMJ recently held a discussion between experts in the fields of general practice, emergency medicine, and paediatrics about the state of out of hours care in the UK, and crucially offered their...

The pattern of damage caused by Zika virus in the brains of 23 foetuses from 2016-04-14T17:47:57

In February World Health Organization (WHO) declared the microcephaly epidemic in South America an international public health emergency. Today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, t...

Plan, do, study, act from 2016-04-08T13:43:16

Plan, do, study, act cycles, or PDSA cycles, are the basis of many quality improvement projects, they're a model to trial changes and feed the lessons from each test into the next. Why are they a ...

Médecins Sans Frontières's Dunkirk spirit from 2016-03-31T13:50:50

As France has moved in recent weeks to clear camps where migrants stay while trying to cross illegally into Britain, Médecins Sans Frontières has just opened a new one.

Sophie Arie talks ...

Should doctors boycott working in Australia’s immigration detention centres? from 2016-03-24T16:48:30

However well intentioned, working in detention centres amounts to complicity in torture, says David Berger, a district medical officer in emergency medicine at Broome Hospital in Australia. Howeve...

"I thought I was the worst person with type I..." - Self management of diabetes from 2016-03-14T12:20:56

Nick Oliver, consultant diabetologist at Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust and Philippa Cooper, who has type I diabetes, join us to explain how structured education works for patients, and give tips on...

"We're pulling the rug out from under the feet of [GPs]" from 2016-03-14T10:30:37

Gareth Iacobucci talks to Candace Imison, director of policy at The Nuffield Trust, about the problems facing GPs, and how primary care could be changed.

"5 minutes with... Candace Imison": http:...

"It's the workforce, stupid" - is the NHS workforce in crisis? from 2016-03-09T11:36:21

As the junior doctors in England strike, concerns for the workforce are foremost in the minds of those running the NHS.

A summary is available here: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i151...

Zika virus - "it really felt like having bad sunburn, all over your body" from 2016-02-26T15:07:01

“Juliet”, a woman living in London, was diagnosed with a mysterious illness in November 2015, Ian Cropley, a consultant in infectious disease from The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, was th...

What is vaginal seeding - and is it safe? from 2016-02-23T16:13:40

How should health professionals engage with this increasingly popular but unproved practice? Aubrey Cunnington, a consultant paediatrician from Imperial College London joins us to discuss.Read the...

Junior doctors second strike - from the picket line from 2016-02-10T17:13:29

This week, junior doctors in England have taken industrial action for the second time in as many months after failing to reach agreement with the government over their proposed new contract.
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The role of stenting in stable angina from 2016-02-05T09:27:53

Iqbal Malik, consultant cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, joins Mabel Chew to discuss the role of angioplasty and stenting in patients with stable angina. Read the...

CKD In the elderly - disease, or disease label from 2016-01-09T16:16:36

Around half of people aged over 75 meet the diagnostic criteria for chronic kidney disease (CKD), but there is debate about what this means for patients as only a proportion of elderly people with...

Cancer screening - does it save lives? from 2016-01-08T15:02:28

The claim that cancer screening saves lives is based on fewer deaths due to the target cancer. Vinay Prasad, assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, joins us to argue that redu...

The big (research) book of British teeth from 2015-12-15T20:59:35

Despite what hollywood says, science has proven that British teeth are actually better than American. Richard Watt, head of the Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL explains...

The more you see, the more you eat from 2015-12-03T15:34:38

Larger portions of food increase consumption. Theresa Marteau, director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, joins us to discuss how government action to tackle...

Sarah Wollaston - obesity, not a sugary drinks tax, is regressive from 2015-12-02T12:28:11

The UK Parliament's Health Select Committee's recent report on childhood obesity says 1 in 5 children are obese by the time they leave school. The committee calls for legislation to turn the tide b...

The diagnosis and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder from 2015-11-27T13:33:17

PTSD may develop after exposure to exceptionally threatening or horrifying events. About 3% of the adult population has PTSD at any one time, and more than 50% in survivors of rape.

In thi...

Revisiting the bridge from 2015-11-13T17:55:03

In the podcast, we’ll hear from Kevin Hines the survivor of such an attempt, and Alys Cole-King, a psychiatrist who wants to break down the stigma of suicide.

Originally broadcast in 2010<...

Unexpected findings, with uncertain implications, in research imaging from 2015-11-13T16:20:27

When healthy volunteers are scanned as part of a research project, unexpected findings, with uncertain implications, can be thrown up. Joanna Wardlaw, professor of applied neuroimaging and honor...

This house believes that medicine is the best career in the world. from 2015-11-02T13:36:55

Medicine has long been a rewarding career, but doctors say the profession needs to overcome the frustrations of working in the NHS to ensure it remains so.

During the Big Debate at BMJ Li...

Europe's impending syrup tsunami from 2015-10-29T11:41:58

Europe's common agricultural policy (CAP) on sugar is due to change, and Emilie Aguirre, from the UKCRC Centre for Diet and Activity Research at the University of Cambridge, argues that an influx o...

The junior doctor protest from 2015-10-21T11:23:40

Thousands of NHS staff have demonstrated against the government’s threatened “imposition” of an “unsafe and unfair” contract for junior doctors.

At a London rally on Saturday 17 October ju...

Is place of death important to patients? from 2015-10-12T13:41:39

The current orthodoxy is that home is the best and preferred place of death for most people, but in this podcast, Kristian Pollock a sociologist from Nottingham University questions these assumptio...

Why do the Scottish do fewer knee arthroscopies? from 2015-09-26T15:34:27

The “correct” rates of discretional interventions are difficult to define. However, David Hamilton and Colin Howie point out that discrepancies in usage of knee arthroscopy within the UK suggest th...

What it's like to receive cardiac rehabilitation from 2015-09-26T14:09:05

With improved survival and and ageing population, the number of people living with coronary heart disease in the UK has increased to an estimated 2.3 million. There is increasing evidence that card...

Dengue fever from 2015-09-24T14:15:45

Around two fifths of the world’s population (those in tropical and subtropical countries), or up to 2.5 billion people, are at risk of dengue infection. An estimated 50 million infections occur an...

They drained 92L from me - diagnosis and management of pleural effusion from 2015-09-10T12:56:11

Pleural effusions are common, with an estimated 1-1.5 million new cases in the United States and 200?000-250?000 in the United Kingdom each year.

Rahul Bhatnagar, academic clinical lecture...

Diagnosis and treatment of hepatic encephalopathy from 2015-08-14T16:41:46

Hepatic encephalopathy constitutes a spectrum of neuropsychiatric abnormalities, beginning with subtle psychomotor changes and progressing to confusion with asterixis, somnolence, and then coma, ar...

Open Doors For Sex Workers from 2015-08-14T15:46:24

Following on from the clinical review "Caring for sex workers", we spoke to the team at Open Doors, a sex worker outreach clinic in east London, run from the Homerton University Hospital NHS Founda...

The system can abuse older people too from 2015-07-24T18:20:08

Elder abuse is often the result of the organisation of health systems rather than the fault of individuals, argue Jolanda Lindenberg and Rudi Westendorp, two authors of a recent analysis paper. Listen

Should doctors recommend homeopathy? from 2015-07-14T15:16:20

A recent review by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council concluded that “there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective”, but...

GI bleeding, slow to diagnose, slow to treat from 2015-07-03T15:16:13

The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) has been examining the treatment of acute GI bleeds in England's NHS. Two of the authors, Martin Sinclair, consultant surg...

Time to target older women for cervical cancer screening? from 2015-06-23T12:45:31

Cervical screening programmes in many countries stop at around the age of 65 and much of the focus is often on younger women. However, comparatively little attention has been given to older women d...

QOF, what is it good for? from 2015-06-15T12:58:46

Martin McShane, medical director of long term conditions at NHS England, questions the validity of the Quality and Outcomes Framework and suggests how it should change in the future. Read the rela...

The BMJ requires data sharing on request for all trials from 2015-05-22T13:22:11

The movement to make data from clinical trials widely accessible has achieved enormous success, and it is now time for medical journals to play their part. From 1 July The BMJ will extend its requi...

The health debate - the analysis from 2015-04-23T13:46:52

The future of health and social care looks certain to be a defining issue in the forthcoming UK general election. Social care has been subject to deep public spending cuts, raising concerns about t...

Health apps for well people - problematic or panacea? from 2015-04-15T15:41:40

Some apps have the potential to encourage healthier habits and are accessible to most people, argues Iltifat Husain, but Des Spence notes the lack of any evidence of effectiveness and the potential...

Thrombolysis in acute ischaemic stroke - time for a rethink? from 2015-03-18T16:39:30

In the US the licence, or marketing authorisation, for alteplase is limited to 0-3 hours after onset of stroke, but some other countries - including the UK and Australia - have extended the licence...

Katherine Henderson A and E consultant - lack of ward beds is hitting A and E the hardest from 2015-03-11T14:55:57

Katherine Henderson is the clinical lead of the emergency department at St Thomas's hospital in London. She worries that lack of ward space is having a domino effect throughout A and E and is the ...

Obioma Ezekobe GP - patients need to be educated about resources from 2015-03-11T14:55:55

Obioma Ezekobe is a GP in an urgent care centre in Central Middlesex Hospital. She believes that the public need to be educated about the use of NHS resources, and be taught when it is appropriat...

Patrick Keating GP - under pressure to increase list size from 2015-03-11T14:55:51

BMJ Voices is a collection of readers’ experiences of working in the NHS. For this, The BMJ is seeking short audio submissions from UK listeners. These submissions will be published on thebmj.com. ...

Nuffield summit - Bastiaan Bloem on parkinsons.net from 2015-03-05T16:22:29

Bastiaan Bloem, consultant neurologist at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Netherlands, discussing his revolutionary approach to patient centred care. Read more from the summit:

http:...

Overdiagnosis in breast cancer - 45 years to become a mainstream idea from 2015-03-04T11:34:35

In this podcast Alexandra Barratt, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, discusses how questions about overdiagnosis in breast cancer screening programmes were first raised 45 yea...

Jackie Applebee GP - the funding formula is hurting deprived practices from 2015-02-13T17:27:24

Jackie Applebee is a GP in Tower Hamlets in London, and is concerned that the way the GP funding formula is working doesn't take account of the earlier health needs of people in deprived areas.
Listen

Michelle Sinclair GP - surgery buildings are not up to scratch from 2015-02-13T16:17:25

Michelle Sinclar, a GP in Hampshire who is concerned that GP premises aren't fit for purpose and limit her ability to provide fully rounded patient care. BMJ Voices is a collection of readers’ exp...

Mark Folman GP - time pressure and patient care from 2015-02-13T16:17:24

Mark Folman, a GP in Nottinghamshire, is concerned that more and more work, with more and more patients, means less time with those who really need him. BMJ Voices is a collection of readers’ expe...

Patient spotlight - How can we get better at providing patient centred care? from 2015-02-10T13:04:46

Participants in our discussion on person centred care in January
agreed that a change in culture and better use of technology
could benefit both patients and doctors.

At the roundt...

Patient spotlight - Doing it for themselves from 2015-02-10T11:45:45

In our accompanying roundtable discussion,we hear views from a group of patients and clinicians based largely in the UK on the actions required  to advance  progress towards providing patient cent...

International donations to the Ebola virus outbreak: too little, too late? from 2015-02-04T11:19:32

Karen Grépin, assistant professor of global health policy at New York University, has been examining the pledges made by the international community to help fight the ebola virus outbreak - was it ...

Management of cancer induced bone pain from 2015-01-30T17:07:05

Bone pain is the most common type of pain from cancer and is present in around one third of patients with bone metastases, currently, improvements in cancer treatments mean that many patients are l...

Managing multimorbidity in primary care from 2015-01-23T11:56:24

Multimorbidity presents a number of different challenges, for the patients living with the conditions, but also for the health professionals caring for them in systems that often are not designed w...

WHO needs exercise? from 2015-01-22T13:10:58

Philipe de Souto Barreto argues that, to reduce premature mortality, policies should focus on getting fully inactive people to do a little physical activity rather than strive for the entire popula...

Rabies in animals from 2015-01-16T18:42:59

Rabies is the archytypical zoonotic disease, and only by vaccination in animals will we prevent infections in people. In two podcasts linked to our latest clinical review "The prevention and manage...

Is the Hep C screening expansion justified? from 2015-01-14T11:56:33

Until recently, hepatitis C screening was offered to people at increased risk of infection - such as intravenous drug users - but now, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommen...

Operating theatre time, where does it all go? from 2014-12-19T16:45:21

Waiting times in theatre can be a source of friction – but is the delay due to mandatory anaesthetic faff around time (MAFAT), or AWOL surgeons?

Elizabeth Travis, and orthopaedic house of...

Grumpy old doctors from 2014-12-18T12:57:46

Those who rise to the top in medicine see themselves as hardworking extroverts with a caring nature, suggests an unscientific analysis of the answers given by contributors to BMJ Confidential. But...

Men are idiots from 2014-12-15T16:02:30

Winners of the Darwin Award must eliminate themselves from the gene pool in such an idiotic manner that their action ensures one less idiot will survive. Ben and Dennis Lendrem, and colleagues, ha...

Musical (operating) theatre from 2014-12-12T16:15:02

One hundred years ago, Pennsylvanian surgeon Evan Kane penned a brief letter to JAMA in which he declared himself a rigorous proponent of the “benefic [sic] effects of the phonograph within the ope...

Great leap backwards - austerity measures are hitting the vulnerable hardest from 2014-12-10T17:19:43

The UK’s austerity programme has disproportionately affected children and people with disabilities, says David Taylor-Robinson, a senior clinical lecturer in public health at the University of Live...