Far right rallies have been held across the UK, culminating in a large parade in London where Elon Musk spoke. At the same time, politicians from across the political spectrum are following the talking points of far right parties - and shifting their policies rightward, even the Labour home secretary has said she wishes to double the period migrants have to be in the UK before they can become citizens. That has made a group of medics decide it’s time for doctors and other healthcare professional...
Nov 03, 2025•31 min•Ep. 54
This week on the podcast The BMJ investigates Q-COLLAR, an American device that distributors claim can reduce brain injury from contact sports. Investigators James Smoliga and Mu Yang take us through the evidence, and former NFL punter turned US bobsled team member Johnny Townsend explains what this means for sportspeople. Bin Wang from Zhejiang University School of Medicine explains what the new network metaanalysis finds is the best exercise options for knee osteoarthritis And, what our patien...
Oct 21, 2025•36 min•Ep. 53
In this episode of the podcast; In July this year, the Government published their 10 year health plan for England - A new analysis just published on BMJ.com takes an in depth look at the chances of that plan succeeding, and where the government needs to focus time and resources. Bob Klaber, paediatrician and director of strategy, research and innovation at Imperial College Healthcare, and Helen Salisbury, GP and columnist for the BMJ join us to discuss. Journalist Chris Stoker-Walker's grandfath...
Oct 07, 2025•44 min•Ep. 52
In today’s episode: Assisted Dying moves closer to becoming UK law. The proposed legislation to allow people to end their own lives has moved through a second debate in the House of Lords. What do MPs and doctors think of the Bill as it stands? And, new ways to pull research findings from observation alone makes us question whether correlation really doesn’t equal causation. We find out - what is Target Trial Emulation? The BMJ’s Elisabeth Mahase speaks to Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, sponsor of th...
Sep 22, 2025•38 min•Ep. 51
In today’s episode: Rethinking how we measure the harm caused by the arms industry The life long, and multigenerational, impact of starvation in Gaza What is the appropriate focus on prevention in general practice? The BMJ's international editor, Jocalyn Clark talks about a new series we've just published - examining the arms industry as a commercial determinant of health. Jocalyn also speaks to Mark Bellis, from Liverpool John Moores university about why he thinks it’s time we take the impact o...
Sep 09, 2025•37 min•Ep. 50
CRISPR technology has revolutionised biological research, and for the first time it’s out of the lab and into the NHS, as NICE has approved its use as cost effective. Kenneth Charles, senior lecturer in haematology at the University of the West Indies explains how the treatment works, and what concerns he has about it's implementation. Also this week, a new investigation on bmj.com has looked at a number of British companies who are offering to collect children's teeth for stem cell extraction a...
Aug 21, 2025•36 min•Ep. 49
If you’ve been in a high street pharmacy or supermarket recently, chances are you’ll have seen home test kits for all sorts of indications; blood sugar level, vitamin deficiencies, thyroid function, and even some forms of cancer. A new series of article in The BMJ revealing serious concerns with the reliability of these home tests, and raises questions about their regulation. Jonathan Deeks, professor of Biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, joins us to discuss what these tests are, and...
Jul 29, 2025•28 min•Ep. 48
Professor Gillian Leng, President of the Royal Society of Medicine was asked to carry out an independent review into the role of physician and anaesthetic associates. She sits down with Kamran Abbasi, editor in chief of The BMJ, to discuss her findings. In the UK, the rollout of physician associates, NHS staff who took on some of the tasks of doctors, has been both haphazard and controversial. Originally copied from similar roles in the U.S., British PAs were introduced in the early 2000s. The l...
Jul 24, 2025•53 min•Ep. 47
This week we’re focusing on the NHS. On the 3rd of July the UK’s Prime Minister, Kier Starmer finally announced the NHS’ 10 year plan. His Labour government laid out a vision for where the healthcare service should head over the next decade. The announcement has been met with mixed responses. The plan has some good ideas - but a lack of vision combined with scarcity of detail leave many questions about how well its aims can be implemented. In this podcast we're joined by 3 experts to dissect the...
Jul 15, 2025•42 min•Ep. 46
Rebecca Coombes interviews Dr. Tom Dolphin, consultant anaesthetist and newly elected chair of the BMA Council. Watch this interview on our YouTube.
Jul 11, 2025•35 min•Ep. 45
Last December, The BMJ published an investigation into the 2009 PLATO trial - exposing serious problems with that study’s data analysis and reporting. Our follow up investigation has shown that those data problems extend to other key supporting evidence in AstraZeneca’s initial application to regulators. Peter Doshi, senior editor in the BMJ’s Investigations unit, and Rita Redberg, cardiologist and Professor of Medicine at UCSF and former editor of JAMA Internal Medicine, join us to explain what...
Jul 01, 2025•34 min•Ep. 44
In this episode, we hear about ketamine addiction. It's in the news, but the rise in addiction amongst young people in the UK has caused concern for some time. Irene Guerrini and Nicola Kalk, both addiction psychiatrists from the National Addiction Centre, join us to explain why its become a problem. In November 2024 Wes Streeting, the UK’s health and social care minister, announced that he was planning to introduce league tables for hospitals - and would be linking managers' pay and continued e...
Jun 16, 2025•26 min•Ep. 43
Devi Sridhar's new book “How Not to Die (Too Soon) - The Lies We’ve Been Sold, and the Policies That Could Save Us” is focussing on the way wellness culture ignores the societal context in which health is really created. As a trained personal trainer and professor of global public health, Devi's straddling both of those worlds, and joins us to talk about how she would tackle our lowering life expectancy. Also, John Downey, from the Centre of Health Technology at Peninsula Medical School, and Mar...
Jun 02, 2025•39 min•Ep. 42
Recent escalations in the ever simmering tension between India and Pakistan brought us closer to conflict - conflict between two nuclear powers. For a long time doctors have campaigned for nuclear disarmament, and Chris Zielinski, president of the World Association of Medical Editors, makes the case for returning WHO's mandate to measure the potential impact of nuclear war. Also the militarization of the region is detrimental to the health and wellbeing of the populations in both India and Pakis...
May 19, 2025•40 min•Ep. 41
China was declared malaria free in 2021 - and we'll hear how persistence was key to their success, and what new technologies are available to help the rest of the world become malaria free, from Regina Rabinovich, director of the Malaria Elimination Initiative at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. Sonia Saxena, professor of primary care at Imperial College London, and Miguel O’Ryan, dean of the medical faculty of the University of Chile join Kamran to talk about what broke academic medic...
May 07, 2025•37 min•Ep. 40
The UK government is debating legislation to allow assisted dying in England and Wales, which puts doctors at the forefront of deciding if their patient will be eligible for a medically assisted death - the key criteria being a 6 month prognosis. But is making a 6 month prognosis actually clinically reliable? To discuss we're joined by a panel of experts on end of life; Scott Murray, emeritus professor of primary palliative care at the University of Edinburgh Simon Etkind, assistant professor of...
Apr 23, 2025•31 min•Ep. 39
Kamran Abbasi interviews Professor Ashish Jha, Dean of Public Health at Brown University and former COVID-19 pandemic advisor to President Biden. Watch this interview on our YouTube. Trump’s second term has touched everything in the US political sphere - and health is no exception. With research funding for medicine and science weathering under Trump’s storm of cuts, how can Americans who care about public health and data navigate a course through the swells? Professor Jha discusses how to resis...
Apr 11, 2025•50 min•Ep. 38
The UK’s chancellor has announced a £5bn cut to benefits, much of which will be borne by those on long-term disability allowance. Gerry McCartney, professor of wellbeing economy at Glasgow University explains about why these cuts will not only hurt the most vulnerable, but will be counterproductive to the government's wish to get people back to work. Also, Suzanne O'Sullivan, consultant neurologist and author, joins us to talk about her new book "Age of Diagnosis". The book used clinical cases t...
Apr 09, 2025•33 min•Ep. 37
In the UK, the prime minister has announced the disbanding of NHS England, Nigel Crisp - former chief executive of the NHS, explains why he thinks that it’s important the health service is closer to the political decision makers, and why this could be the time to really acknowledge the healthcare emergency. On the international stage, the Trump administration's withdrawal from the WHO is throwing global health into disarray - Illona Kickbusch, founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate ...
Mar 26, 2025•38 min•Ep. 36
We've just published a new rapid review on the safety and efficacy of physician and anaesthetic associates in the UK, which was commissioned to support the ongoing Leng review of these new roles in the NHS. Trish Greenhalgh, professor of primary care at the University of Oxford, joins us to discuss the data she found. Habib Naqvi is director of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, and is holding up a mirror to the NHS on it's support for ethnic minority patients and doctors - he joins us to talk...
Mar 12, 2025•47 min•Ep. 35
From pay restoration, to making sure there are enough training posts for resident doctors, the BMA has been busy. In this podcast, Kamran Abbasi, the editor in chief of The BMJ, spoke to Phil Banfield, chair of the BMA’s council. They talk about the ongoing pay discussions, how the BMA is working with the new government - touching on both speciality training places, and the role of physician assistants. The conversation also covers the BMA's changing strategy, which aims to empower local members...
Mar 05, 2025•29 min•Ep. 34
In this episode of the BMJ's Medicine and Science podcast, editor-in-chief Kamran Abbasi discusses the urgent need to tackle disinformation in health, especially in the context of the US, with Heidi Larson and Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. We also hear from Jane Ballentyne, professor of anaesthesia and pain medicine at the University of Washington, about new guidelines that strongly recommend against the use of spinal injections for chronic pain - and why ...
Feb 26, 2025•31 min
Providing quality healthcare is demanding, often stressful, and requires sustained effort. When resources are stretched and pressure mounts, compassion can slip - but compassion is an essential tool for leaders, who need to support their teams to continue delivering the best possible care. In this final episode of The BMJ’s podcast series on quality of care, Rachael Hinton, BMJ Editor, speaks to three healthcare leaders. They discuss how fostering kind and compassionate leadership and care can i...
Feb 21, 2025•24 min•Ep. 33
This week Rebecca Coombes is back with another big-food investigation, this time about fast-food giant MacDonalds subverting attempts to stop it opening stores near schools. Sticking with industry behaving badly, May van Schalkwyk, from the University of Edinburgh, wonders why we haven't learn lessons from the attempts to control big tobacco companies, when it comes to other industries that harm health. And finally, AI in healthcare - Karim Lekadir, from the University of Barcelona, explains new...
Feb 12, 2025•34 min•Ep. 32
Exercise and a better diet, prior to surgery, can improve outcomes. Daniel McIsaac, a professor of anaesthesiology from the University of Ottowa and lead author of that research, joins us to talk about getting those results into practice. Julia Sinclair, professor of addiction psychiatry at the University of Southampton, explains how the NHS has lost sight of the impact alcohol consumption has on clinical care, and why we need a strategy to tackle it. Finally, Matt Morgan, consultant in intensiv...
Jan 29, 2025•41 min•Ep. 31
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to withdraw the US out of the WHO. This would cut funding for the UN’s medical agency by one-fifth. Will they really exit, or can a deal be made? Lawrence Gostin hopes so, and as a professor of law at Georgetown, and director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, he is working with senior US and WHO officials to try and understand what reforms could be made to WHO what would allow a such a ...
Jan 24, 2025•30 min
In the last podcast of 2024, Richard Smith, former editor of The BMJ and head of UKHACC will be making the case for being more convivial. Tina Korownyk, professor of family medicine at the University of Alberta is the ghost of Christmas past for TV doctors. Tim Feeny and Navjoyt Ladher take us through this year's Christmas research papers. And finally, Mari Martensen, a paramedic, explains what makes being a medic in Svalbard bear-able. Reading list. The dangers of industrialisation—why we need ...
Dec 30, 2024•41 min•Ep. 29
Conflicts of interest harm health, and a new investigation uncovers the infiltration of big food manufacturers into UK schools. Emma Wilkinson reports on that investigation. Kamran and Rebecca Coombes, head of journalism, discuss moves to reduce industry's impact on food policy in the UK. A new research paper has identified a link between eating chocolate and lower rates of diabetes. Binkai Liu, doctoral student and Qi Sun, associate professor, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health ex...
Dec 17, 2024•33 min•Ep. 28
In today’s episode, new research, which has looked at the impact staff turnover is having on patient outcomes. Giuseppe Moscelli, associate professor at the University of Surrey joins Navjoyt Ladher to explain more. Also, every year the BMJ has a Christmas appeal - and this year we have chosen the International Rescue Committee as our partner. To talk more about what they do, and to give us some insight into how geopolitics are affecting health we're joined David Milliband, president and chief e...
Dec 04, 2024•33 min•Ep. 27
This week we’re at the World Innovation Summit for Health, where we’re a media partner - the meeting is focussing on conflict, equity and resilience. In that vein, we’re joined by Christos Christou, international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to talk about attacks on healthcare staff, and the difficulty and importance of maintaining neutrality in conflict zones. Ara Darzi, surgeon, executive chair of the conference, and author of the recent NHS review, joins us to talk about antimi...
Nov 20, 2024•32 min•Ep. 26
