With the anticipation of a new government in the UK, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting will hit the ground running - with a winter season (and it's inevitable crisis) and ongoing industrial desputes with junior doctors. Elisabeth Mahase ask him about his plans to handle these challenges if elected. We also find our selves in the puzzling situation of potential GP unemployment in the UK despite a high demand for primary care doctors, Helen Salisbury, GP and columnist for The BMJ explains how ...
May 10, 2024•34 min
Where next for psychological safety? Amy Edmundson is professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her work on psychological safety has underpinned so much quality improvement, and she joins us fresh of the stage at the International Forum on Quality and safety in healthcare to talk about the next steps in creating a safe work place. The BMJ has published two new investigations, looking at the alcohol and tobacco industry funding of public health and education - we’ll h...
Apr 26, 2024•37 min
Hilary Cass, the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics, has spent the last 3 years collating the evidence for treatment of gender questioning young people; engaging with those young people, their families and their clinicians - all with the aim of improving NHS treatment of this complex and vulnerable group. In this interview, Kamran Abbasi, editor in chief of The BMJ, speaks in depth to Cass about her review - about evidence base for transitioning, but also about the way in which...
Apr 12, 2024•38 min
Derogation, the way in which striking doctors can be recalled to the ward to protect patient safety, was agreed by NHS England and the BMA. Now, new data The BMJ has uncovered shows that the mechanism was rarely used - and when it was tried, was often rejected. Gareth Iacobucci explains what that means about relations between the government, the NHS, and doctors. Felice Jacka, director of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University, is one of the authors of our recent ultra-processed foods u...
Mar 29, 2024•30 min
In this week's podcast: How AI will affect the clinician-patient relationship? Our annual Nuffield Summit roundtable asks how the promise of tech tools stacks up against reality, and how the future of the therapeutic relationship can be protected (participants below). Your code is as important as your methods, which is why The BMJ now requires you to share it - Ben Goldacre and Nick De Vito, from the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford, explain why it's so impo...
Mar 15, 2024•37 min•Ep. 14
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case on the approval of mifepristone for medical abortion - a case which could change the availability of the drug in the US, and which hinges on papers linking abortion to mental distress. However, those papers are contested (including a paper published by BMJ), and some have been retracted already - Julia Littell and Antonia Biggs tell us how that science is being used in court, and why retraction is essential. Awakening from anaesthetic is difficult enough,...
Mar 01, 2024•39 min
Social media, and the rate at which the online world is changing, is worrying - especially the speed at which health disinformation can speed around the globe. We look to tech companies for a solution to the problems of their own making - but Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, and professor of anthropology, risk and decision science at LSHTM, joins us to explain why we should be cautious about focussing our attention there. Next on the podcast, research just published in T...
Feb 16, 2024•35 min
With a new logo, and new music, comes a revamped The BMJ Podcast. Every two weeks we’ll be bringing you a magazine style show, more variety and perspectives on medicine, health, and wellbeing. In this episode: Former chief executive of the NHS, Nigel Crisp, explaining why the UK is facing a national health and care emergency (01:22) The guest editors of our US covid series, Gavin Yamey and Ana Diez Roux, discuss the US pandemic response, and how problems are built into the US constitution (19:48...
Feb 02, 2024•40 min
In this festive edition of the BMJ podcast, we hear about what medicine can learn from music, when it comes to giving a convincing performance, and how we can grow an evidence base for nature prescribing. Professors Roger Kneebone and Aaron William of the Centre for Performance Science raise the curtain on the performance of medicine, and we hear what your consultation technique could learn from a hairstylist. Ruth Garside, Professor of Evidence Synthesis, Kerryn Husk, Associate Professor of Hea...
Dec 22, 2023•34 min
There’s an inherent tension between creating quality standards that are very clinically focussed, and standards which are very patient centred - especially in settings where clinical outcomes can be compromised by basic lack of resources. The use of oxytocin to prevent bleeding after birth is an example of this - WHO quality guidelines clearly measure and incentivise use of the drug, but in more wealthy healthcare systems, adherence patient preference is the key measure. How can we ensure that l...
Dec 21, 2023•40 min
In this specially curated three-part podcast series from The BMJ, we explore the importance of community and connection to foster adolescent wellbeing. The discussion covers athe wide array of issues young people face, with a particular focus on the unique challenges of adolescence from a social perspective. The episode unpacks the significance of having supportive relationships within families, schools, and communities and the influence of these relationships on the mental and behavioural healt...
Dec 14, 2023•48 min
This is the second episode of a special three-part podcast series that delves into adolescent health and wellbeing, focusing on creating a positive trajectory of health from a young age. The podcast explores physical and mental health issues affecting young people globally, particularly in sexual and reproductive health. We hear how young people are excluded from decisions about their own health, and how grassroots groups around the world are empowering them to take responsibility for their own ...
Dec 14, 2023•45 min
In the final episode of this three-part podcast series from The BMJ, we dive into the vital topic of education for adolescents and how it influences the course of life. This podcast explores barriers, burdens and possibilities of change in the educational system to better support young people, and how the traditional system of schooling is failing to equip young people with the skills and knowledge to lead healthy lives. We also hear how the value of informal education and its impact on subjects...
Dec 14, 2023•46 min
The December edition of the Talk Evidence podcast discusses the complexities of seeking consent from patients who are part of large data sets, and some new research to help patients living with diabetes in places without certain power supplies. First patient consent and data - in the UK, two stories that have made the public worry about the use of their health data. Firstly the news that UK biobank, who hold a lot of genomic and health data, allowed research by an insurance company, and second t...
Dec 12, 2023•41 min
We were accepting of an increase in deaths every winter 'flu season, but Ashish Jha thinks that is not longer a tenable position. Lessons he learned during his time as the White House Covid-19 coordinator have convinced him we should be taking a different approach to the winter season. In this interview with Mun-Keat Looi, The BMJ's international features editor, we hear about living with COVID, the future of antivirals, vaccines, and surveillance. They talk about long COVID, the investment requ...
Dec 01, 2023•39 min•Ep. 13
Each episode of Talk Evidence we take a dive into an issue or paper which is in the news, with a little help from some knowledgeable guests to help us to understand what it all means for clinical care, policy, or research. In this episode: Helen Macdonald take a deep dive into cancer screening tests, prompted by a paper in JAMA which showed most have no effect on all cause mortality, and news that the NHS is evaluating a single test which screens for 50 common cancers - we ask Barry Kramer, form...
Nov 06, 2023•33 min•Ep. 12
Organisational and student leaders explore the responsibilities of the British Medical Association and The BMJ to understand and respond to its colonial history. Our panel Kamran Abassi, editor in chief, The BMJ, London, UK Omolara Akinnawonu, Foundation year doctor, Essex, UK, and outgoing co-chair of the BMA medical students committee Latifa Patel, elected chair of the UK BMA's Representative Body and BMA EDI lead Host - Navjoyt Ladher, clinical editor for The BMJ...
Oct 17, 2023•46 min
Leaders from academic and funding organisations discuss the transformative change required to overcome extractive and inequitable research practices in global health, and the need for examining power and privilege within traditional research institutions. Our panel Samuel Oti, senior program specialist, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada, and member of the Global Health Decolonization Movement in Africa (GHDM-Africa) Muneera Rasheed, clinical psychologist and behaviour sci...
Oct 17, 2023•54 min
International health leaders discuss how feminist and decolonial advocates in health face similar resistance and attempts to sow divisiveness, and how they can join forces to promote health equity and justice for all. Our panel Raewyn Connell, sociologist and professor emerita at the University of Sydney, Australia Sarah Hawkes, professor of global public health and director of the Centre for Gender and Global Health, University College London, UK Sanjoy Bhattacharya, head of the school of histo...
Oct 17, 2023•50 min
Experts discuss how failing to confront colonial pasts is linked to present lack of progress in global health equity, why health leaders need historical educations, and how, for Indigenous peoples, it’s not just a colonial history but a colonial present. Our panel Seye Abimbola, editor of BMJ Global Health, and health systems researcher from Nigeria currently based at the University of Sydney, Australia Catherine Kyobutungi, Ugandan epidemiologist and executive director of the African Population...
Oct 17, 2023•54 min
Healthcare leaders discuss the ways in which colonial-era bias and eugenics persist in today’s medical education and clinical practice in the UK and beyond, and what meaningful change is required to overcome racial and other healthcare inequalities Our panel Annabel Sowemimo, sexual and reproductive health registrar and part-time PhD student and Harold Moody Scholar at King’s College London, UK Thirusha Naidu, head of clinical psychology, King Dinuzulu Hospital, and associate professor, Departme...
Oct 17, 2023•52 min
We’ve heard throughout the series from people who have a passion for sustainability, and have successfully made changes in their organisations to reduce the planetary impact of their work. In doing so, they will have recruited other people who have a similar outlook - but they will have also convinced people who aren’t prioritising sustainability. In this last podcast of the series, we’re delving into that - how to talk to colleagues and patients, in ways which connect with their own needs and p...
Oct 14, 2023•53 min•Ep. 11
One element of sustainable healthcare is simply reducing the amount of healthcare you’re doing by not doing the things that are of no value to patients. However, how do we do this in practice? And why is it often so hard? What is the role of fear in this discussion? These are all questions we will discuss in this episode. To help us with this we’ll be joined by Prof Ben Newell (cognitive psychologist from University of New South Wales, whose research interest includes judgement and decision maki...
Oct 06, 2023•50 min•Ep. 10
Acting on climate change is often framed as having to give stuff up, to cost more money, to make sacrifices. Yet in healthcare we find the opposite can often be true: there are many actions we can take which reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare which actually end up with better outcomes for our patients. In this episode, we hear from two examples of that. Singing for breathing is a type of social prescribing to help people with chronic lung disease manage their breathlessness, reducing thei...
Oct 02, 2023•38 min
Ooops! If you listened to episode 3 when it first came out you may have realised that the title didn't quite match the content. We've just updated the title and the show notes below, and stay tuned for when we'll be soon releasing an episode on how sustainable healthcare can be good for patients. In a system where healthcare workers are continually described as overworked and burnt out, how can we expect them to find the time to act on the climate? In this episode we turn that assumption on its ...
Sep 22, 2023•55 min•Ep. 9
In this month's Talk Evidence, Helen and Juan are reporting from Preventing Overdiagnosis - the conference that raises issues of diagnostic accuracy, and asks if starting the process of medicalisation is always the right thing to do for patients. In this episode, they talk about home testing, sustainability and screening. They're also joined by two guests to talk about the overdiagnosis of obesity - when that label is stigmatising and there seem to be few successful treatments that medicine can ...
Sep 16, 2023•36 min•Ep. 8
Healthcare is a complex system, and if we want to make changes such as those needed for sustainable healthcare, we need to work across multiple teams, and make sure we hear everyone’s voice, including our patients’. In this episode we’ll discuss how we can communicate and work with those different groups, and some novel ways of getting the message across from T-rexes worth of plastic gloves to art made out of surgical waste. Guests for this episode: Nicola Wilson, lead clinical educator, Great O...
Aug 31, 2023•43 min•Ep. 7
Planet centred care is new podcast series for the BMJ exploring issues related to environmentally sustainable healthcare, aimed at all clinicians, and anyone working in healthcare, who want to make sure they can continue to help patients while not harming the planet. In this episode we’ll discuss that first radicalising moment. That moment where you start to see all the things you can do to make healthcare more sustainable and how it is hard to un-see that. For everyone, that moment may come fro...
Aug 31, 2023•45 min•Ep. 6
In our final episode of this season, we're going quantitative, with the newly released data on how trainees in the UK are faring. Each year the UK's General Medical Council, the doctor's regulator, surveys trainees in the NHS to ask them questions about stress and burnout, harassment and discrimination, and how well supported they feel in their training. They also ask trainers about the same things. Unsurprisingly, the year the results look bad - with increasing levels of burnout across the boar...
Aug 17, 2023•50 min•Ep. 5
In this month's Talk Evidence, we're getting a little meta - how do we keep an eye on research to make sure it's done with integrity. Helen Macdonald is BMJ's Publication ethics and content integrity editor - and we quiz her about what that actually means on a day to day basis. Ensuring the integrity of research could be made both easier, and harder, by the ascendance of large language models, Ian Mulvany, BMJ's chief technology officer joins us to talk about how we can harness the power of this...
Aug 05, 2023•45 min•Ep. 4
