{"title":"Judith Patricia Dawson","authors":"Michael Dawson","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r101","url":null,"abstract":"As a GP, patient care and integrity were the crucial attributes of Judith’s practice. She had a long track record of partnership roles, with a strong focus on the patient experience, probity, and quality of care. Her facility for languages, including fluent idiomatic French and basic classical Arabic, were advantages in treating migrant communities in Bedford and Oxford, where she practised. Judith was born in Cambridge and went to school in Reading before reading medicine at Cambridge and then Oxford. She began her career as a junior house officer in Milton Keynes, then …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Raymund Michael Shearer","authors":"Desmond J Shearer","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r96","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r96","url":null,"abstract":"Raymund was educated by the Irish Christian Brothers in Belfast and entered Queen’s University Belfast to study medicine when he was 17, qualifying in 1954. He worked as a rotating house officer at the Mater Infirmorum Hospital then went into general practice. He achieved his doctorate by examination in 1966. He …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Training has become purgatory—and this needs to change","authors":"Jaanki-Radha K Patel","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r100","url":null,"abstract":"Dean’s profile of consultant cardiologist Rob Egdell is interesting and insightful.1 Unfortunately, it truly highlights how far training has fallen. Egdell acknowledges that the rotational nature of being a resident doctor hinders us from forming interpersonal relationships at work—under the guise of a more “varied” training of course. I agree—in our …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scarlett McNally: Surgical hubs need to be ringfenced within hospitals to prevent patients being left behind","authors":"Scarlett McNally","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r85","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r85","url":null,"abstract":"The new plan to improve NHS elective care includes creating and expanding surgical hubs.1 As a surgeon, I feel conflicted. It’s positive if patients with treatable conditions can move forward from the waiting list. But we need to do this with great care to avoid negatively affecting the rest of the NHS, especially for patients deemed ineligible or due to the diversion of staff, training capacity, and funding from existing NHS sites.2 We already have over 100 surgical hubs, some delivering 11-20% more efficiency.3 Hubs tend to take patients with few other conditions and relatively low operative risk, whereas patients with more underlying medical conditions and higher risk must wait for a site with medical back-up for their operation. It’s important to consider that half of the patients having procedures are over 604— of whom 63% have multiple comorbidities5 and …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Critical problems with training and retention of doctors","authors":"Sean Gill","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r93","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r93","url":null,"abstract":"The concerning patient outcomes reported in Moscelli and colleagues’ study on nurse and doctor turnover1 underscore the critical problems with the training and retention of doctors in the NHS. The loss of experienced senior clinicians is a longstanding problem exacerbated by unsustainable workloads, pension disputes, and industrial actions, all against a backdrop of unprecedented clinical …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The BMJPub Date : 2025-01-21DOI: 10.1136/bmj-2024-080811
Stephen A Martin, Minna Johansson, Iona Heath, Richard Lehman, Christina Korownyk
{"title":"Sacrificing patient care for prevention: distortion of the role of general practice","authors":"Stephen A Martin, Minna Johansson, Iona Heath, Richard Lehman, Christina Korownyk","doi":"10.1136/bmj-2024-080811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2024-080811","url":null,"abstract":"Expansion of preventive clinical recommendations in primary care has had the unintended consequence of destabilising this foundation of the healthcare system, argue Minna Johansson and colleagues For thousands of years, clinicians cared exclusively for people who were sick. Only over the past five decades has primary care’s focus been increasingly redirected towards risk, not symptoms.1 The change to medical prevention was ushered in during the late 1960s, when diuretic treatment of diastolic blood pressures of 115-129 mm Hg was found to prevent cardiovascular events with a number needed to treat (NNT) of 6 people a year.234 This beneficial intervention was targeted at a high risk population. However, today primary care is increasingly asked to prevent disease in lower risk populations that, at times, compose the majority of the population. Lower baseline risk leads to higher numbers of patients needed to screen and treat—ranging from the hundreds to infinity.5 Although the principle of “prevention is better than cure” is intuitively appealing, it is also empirically limited and distorts clinical relationships: the expansion of and focus on primary prevention interventions for low risk patients is incongruous for a profession dedicated to the relief of suffering. This expansion of medical territory—without a commensurate benefit or an impossible expansion of time—is a major contributor to the primary care crisis in many high income countries. To save primary care from collapse, the enthusiasm for minimally beneficial clinical preventive services in asymptomatic, low risk populations must be curbed and responsibility for primary disease prevention returned or reassigned to public health. Each new prevention activity or expanded target population exacts an unacknowledged opportunity cost on primary care.6 Because time cannot proportionally increase, each extra act of prevention should create improved health outcomes beyond the status quo of caring for sick people. …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kent Buse, Larry Gostin, Adeeba Kamarulzaman, Martin McKee
{"title":"The US withdrawal from the WHO: a global health crisis in the making","authors":"Kent Buse, Larry Gostin, Adeeba Kamarulzaman, Martin McKee","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r116","url":null,"abstract":"In a major blow to global health, the US administration has announced plans to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Kent Buse and colleagues propose urgent actions for the international community to mitigate the damage. When the previous Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), the decision sent shockwaves throughout the world.1 While that decision was reversed by the incoming Biden administration, Trump has done it again. And this time around, he has sufficient time to complete the 12 month withdrawal process. This severing of ties between the world’s largest economy and its foremost public health body represents a major setback for health diplomacy, scientific collaboration, and funding. The repercussions will ripple across borders, leaving WHO weaker and the US isolated when global health challenges demand unity. For decades, WHO has stood as a beacon of international cooperation, coordinating outbreak responses, fostering scientific exchange, setting norms, and providing invaluable technical assistance. The benefits of membership are immense, including disease surveillance, health system strengthening, and health diplomacy. The US helped create WHO and has been a core funder and leader for over 75 years.2 Historically, the …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Megan Deeney, Joe Yates, Jo Banner, Suneetha Kadiyala
{"title":"Ending pollution and health harms from plastics","authors":"Megan Deeney, Joe Yates, Jo Banner, Suneetha Kadiyala","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r71","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r71","url":null,"abstract":"Corporate interests threaten the scope of the global plastics treaty Plastics are exacerbating pressures on all Earth’s planetary boundaries, compromising the foundations of healthy human life.1 Greenhouse gases, toxic chemicals, microplastics, and nanoplastics are released across the entire plastics life cycle—from the extraction of fossil feedstocks that form over 90% of plastics, to polymer and product manufacturing, (re)use, recycling, and end-of-life fates.2 Ending plastics pollution is a global health imperative,3 essential to protecting the human right to health4 and to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.5 In 2025, almost 500 million tonnes of primary plastics will be produced globally and over 400 million tonnes of plastics waste generated, most of which will be sent to landfill, incinerated, dumped, or burnt.6 Two gigatons of greenhouse gases will be emitted across plastics life cycles and more than 24 million tonnes of plastics, including microplastics and nanoplastics, will leak into land, rivers, and oceans.6 Further delays in decisive action will likely see these figures rise and accumulate since plastics production is set to double again by 2060.6 Human health is at risk from the beginning of plastics life …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Children are bearing the brunt of violence in Gaza","authors":"Ulrike Julia Wendt","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r39","url":null,"abstract":"Children are facing the consequences of the conflict in Gaza. Ulrike Julia Wendt explains the IRC’s role in supporting children and families, and delivering life saving aid and essential services The conflict in Gaza has been more than a geopolitical and humanitarian crisis—it is a profoundly human tragedy with severe consequences for an entire generation of Palestinian children and young people. Over a year of Israeli airstrikes, bombing, and ground level violence have killed more than 45 000 Palestinians and destroyed infrastructure and essential services. In the leadup to the recent ceasefire deal, which is in place at the time of writing, there had been no safe place left in Gaza. Families are struggling to meet their basic needs. Continuous attacks have obstructed humanitarian efforts, further limiting the delivery of crucial aid. The ceasefire is a critical moment to protect civilians, secure the release of hostages, and scale up humanitarian aid—a glimmer of hope to restore some sense of normalcy for families who have struggled to survive over the past fifteen months and to pave the way for lasting peace. Today, almost all the 2.2 million people …","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Large US study links processed red meat to dementia risk.","authors":"Owen Dyer","doi":"10.1136/bmj.r126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r126","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":22388,"journal":{"name":"The BMJ","volume":"6 1","pages":"r126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}