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 there are questions about how the NHS will pick up the slack. In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to the full panel; Partha Kar, consultant in diabetes and endocrinology in Portsmouth, Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, Helen Salisbury, GP in Ox...
Mar 03, 2021•43 min
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 she qualified made her reassess her career, and choose a different path. In this podcast, Ash talks to Abi and Cat about the difficulty many doctors have when discussing their mental health - and how speaking out about her own experiences, has encouraged others to talk to her privately - and opened her e...
Feb 26, 2021•45 min
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 Global health at the University of Oxford. In this podcast, he tells us why he thinks that vaccine nationalism is a very short-termist response the pandemic, and why he's bullish about new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. www.bmj.com/coronavirus
Feb 19, 2021•33 min
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, public health consultant in Southampton. This week our special guest is Rachel Clarke, author and palliative care specialist. The panel discuss how end of life care has changed in the pandemic, and how clinicians have become targets of abuse on social media, for speaking out about things like masks and hosp...
Feb 17, 2021•43 min
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 who has previously spoken to us about how Burmese Buddhism helped him in his training. He takes us through a guided mindfullness meditation, tailored to that post-vaccination period, to help you make the most of your observation time. www.bmj.com/wellbeing
Feb 12, 2021•11 min
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 week we pick up on a preprint in medRxiv, which has been attracting attention on social media - it tries to look at the longer term effects of covid hospitalisation. Joe explains why he thinks propensity matching can be summarised as "doing your best". Finally, as more and more care moves remotely, we disc...
Feb 12, 2021•41 min
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 stress support packages. A recent survey of NHS staff showed disturbing signs that covid-19 has caused a widespread trauma in staff, so in this podcast we talked to Neil about trauma and moral injury, what some of the warning signs are, and what individuals and organisations can do to help their colle...
Feb 09, 2021•39 min
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 holds the government to account for its policy choices. In this interview Gareth Iacobucci asks Hunt if he regrets his decision to impose the contract on junior doctors which lead to their industrial action, how workforce issues have left the NHS in a poor state to deal with a health emergency. They also ...
Feb 08, 2021•43 min
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 vaccination, we look back at what we've learned in that time. In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to; Partha Kar, consultant in diabetes and endocrinology in Portsmouth, Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, and Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire....
Feb 04, 2021•41 min
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 prepared the UK and the USA were for a pandemic. Now a year later, with the benefit of hindsight, that confidence was wildly overstated - but why was that, what is the gap between that theoretical readiness, and reality. In this podcast we're joined by talking to Tom Frieden - former director of the C...
Feb 02, 2021•37 min
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 higher than at any point in the pandemic. In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to; Partha Kar, consultant in diabetes and endocrinology in Portsmouth, Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, and Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire. They talk about work...
Jan 27, 2021•42 min
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 warned that things will get worse before they get better. In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to; Partha Kar, consultant in diabetes and endocrinology in Portsmouth, Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire, and N...
Jan 20, 2021•52 min
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 diseases epidemiologist who has worked on Ebola, tuberculosis, and HIV in Africa and South America. She’s a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at New York University’s School of Medicine, as well as an active writer and podcast host, including of Epidemic In this podcast sh...
Jan 19, 2021•29 min
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 using them in asymptomatic screening for covid-19 doesn't follow the science. We're also joined by Allyson Pollock, clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University, and author of a recent editorial in The BMJ about asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2. She explains why she thinks supportin...
Jan 16, 2021•42 min
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 development of that vaccine - what he thinks about the UK government's plan to increase the interval between doses; if he worries about a mutating virus and vaccine escape; and how the university came to make a deal with a commercial company to provide cost-price vaccinations for the world. www.bmj.com/cor...
Jan 14, 2021•45 min
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 covid-19 patients, they are also here to provide emotional support for NHS staff however they are feeling. In this podcast, Ben Phillips, head of service programmes for Samaritans joins us to explain how being listened to can help - and how to tactfully point your colleagues towards that emotional help if ...
Jan 12, 2021•27 min
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 which work for everyone is difficult, even harder for food aid providers who have to factor in things like long term storage, reduced access to fresh produce and in some cases the inability to afford the electricity to cook with. In this podcast, Sabine Goodwin, IFAN's coordinator is joined by Isabel Rice, ...
Jan 08, 2021•18 min
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 programmes make a faltering start. In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire, and Nisreen Alwan, public health consultant in Southampton, about the pressure on critical care, Eng...
Jan 06, 2021•50 min
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 Christmas edition of The BMJ goes further than that - and talks about the insights that participants in research provide- insights that the academic team would never be able to have themselves. In this podcast, Seb Crutch a professor of neuropsychology, and Martin Rossor, national director for dementia...
Jan 05, 2021•27 min
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 way in which clinical pre-prints have become an important part of the research ecosystem, especially during the pandemic, and pick up on some of the non-coronavirus things you might have missed in the deluge of data.
Jan 03, 2021•36 min
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 festive quiz features the deep breath in gang, as well as Cat Chatfield from the Wellbeing podcast, and Helen Macdonald from our Talk Evidence podcasts. Reading list; Thyroid disease assessment and management: summary of NICE guidance https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m41 Thyroid hormones treatment for s...
Jan 01, 2021•1 hr 5 min
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 editor at The BMJ talks to two of her research team colleagues, John Fletcher and Tim Feeney, as they talk through why they chose their favourite papers. Toxicological analysis of George’s marvellous medicine https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4467 Does medicine run in the family—evidence from three ge...
Dec 28, 2020•40 min
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, join us to explain what human factors are, why they’re not a bigger part of medical training, and talk about their importance as the NHS comes under greater and greater pressure because of the surge in covid-19 cases. They also offer a word of advice to Santa, about making sure a festive never-event never...
Dec 24, 2020•43 min
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 year though, covid-19 has changed everything - and we’re focussed inwards, on the UK. With growing unemployment, sections of the population being laid off, and with the well documented delays in receiving universal credit - food insecurity has become a major issue in the sixth largest economy in the wor...
Dec 23, 2020•28 min
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 atriums. And while you or I might notice things about the way in which the hospital looks - James and Annabel noticed the way in which is sounded. James is perusing a PhD at Queen Mary University of London into acoustics and the intelligibility of sound - and in this podcast we delve into the sound of a ho...
Dec 22, 2020•46 min
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. In this wellbeing podcast, we focus on "Do Pause; you are not a to do list" - a book that Cat has had on her to do list for months. Rob explain to us what the concept of "pausing" is, and why he thinks a small gesture can have a significant effect on our ability to deal with the stresses of day to day w...
Dec 18, 2020•39 min
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 - should Christmas gatherings be cancelled? In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, and Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire. They're joined by Mike Tildesley, reader in mathematics at Warwick School of Life Sciences,...
Dec 16, 2020•48 min
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 covered much is what it’s like to do, and take part in, a vaccine trial. In this special podcast, we’re going to hear from John Wright, director of the Bradford Institute of Health Research. He’s been keeping a “doctors diary” for BBC radio, and in this podcast we’re doing a deeper dive into that - and f...
Dec 14, 2020•30 min
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 to Baruch Fischhoff, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on public health communication about how that messaging should be done. Peter Doshi, associate editor at The BMJ, and vaccine regulation researcher also joins us to talk about the data now released on the vaccine trials - what ques...
Dec 11, 2020•47 min
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, plus treating those who have already contracted the disease. In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, and Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire. They discuss why it's impossible to get the vaccine into care hom...
Dec 08, 2020•52 min
