Medicine and Science from The BMJ

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 public health at Imperial College London. At the event to launch the issue, they managed to persuade Simon Stephens , chief executive of the NHS, to put money into a “race in health observatory” Mala joi...

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 given GPs some much-needed headspace to reflect on changes to make going forward. Will we be able to turn general practice off and on again, like a faulty computer? Will we just drift back to the status q...

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 most populous - but in neighbouring Peru, numbers are growing too. And it’s to Peru that we turn to talk to our guest today, Valerie Paz-Soldan is a social scientist and director of the Tulane Health Offic...

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 the uncertainties around foreign travel, how can we recreate in some way that holiday feeling. Simon Calder, travel correspondent for The Independent newspaper, offers his staycation tips and alternative trav...

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 - and how they intersect with the covid pandemic. (1.39) Helen and Carl talk about the data underlying the newly retracted papers on hydroxychloroquine and ace-inhibitors or ARBs and covid. (7.45) Fiona Go...

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 doctor. He invites us to consider how the same techniques might be useful psychological tool for all healthcare workers during this challenging time.

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 life, and why those papers on hydroxychloroquine were retracted. This is Talk Evidence - the podcast for evidence based medicine, where research, guidance and practice are debated and demystified. Helen Ma...

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 place to follow that playbook. In this podcast, Nicole Lurie, Gavin Yamey and Gregg Gonsalves talk about how the US response to public health was mismanaged, how it has become politicized, and what that pla...

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 purely out of force of habit, or are we worried about missing something vital, and therefore find reassurance in doing them? How should we interpret test results, and how do these results affect the way...

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 15000 papers. How can we sift through the flood of research and know what's any good? (2.30) Helen Macdonald talks to Elizabeth Loder about the volume of research we're seeing, and why journals and peer...

*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 funding of medics. Ray Moynihan, researcher at Bond University, has been looking at financial ties between some healthcare association leaders, and industry, in the US, and reports that in new research publis...

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. He saw similarities in the aviation industry, which uses a theory of human factors to explain why things go wrong when humans interact with complex systems. Stress was a major culprit, in both aerospace...

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 comparisons are being questioned. To discuss the implication of that are; Sridhar Venkatapuram associate professor global health & philosophy at King's College London Kathleen Bachynski Assistant professor of pub...

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 hear about the new antibody tests which are available in the UK - are they actually a game changer? (2.00) Helen explains what some new evidence says about hydroxychloroquine (spoiler; don’t take it for c...

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 death with those who might not be ready to discuss it, and families are losing loved ones without being able to say goodbye. In this episode, we also look at survivor guilt, the range of emotions that grievi...

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 acting differently. In this podcast, we talk to Howard Markel, a professor of pediatrics at Michigan, as well as professor in the history of medicine. He's written books on quarantines and epidemics, and wa...

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 potential negative effects - including arrhythmias. We know that kind of information spreads online - particularly through social media, but how does it do that? In this podcast we talk to Adam Kucharski,...

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 these podcasts, we're going to try to get away from the headlines and talk about what we need to know - to hopefully give you some insight into these issues. This week. (3.10) Calum Semple, professor of out...

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 antibody testing issues have exposing how innovation is uncoordinated and driven by the worst bits of the free market. In this podcast we talked to Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s first Chief scientist, and...

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 of post-crisis crash. In this podcast, we speak to Ali Milani, a former Labour politician who ran against Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his London constituency during the 2019 election. How might Milan...

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 on your demographic - will you have to work with other people, will you have to take public transport to work, and can you wear a mask in public safely? To talk about the importance of not neglecting thos...

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, treatment options, things we shouldn't be doing. We're going to try to get away from the headlines and talk about what we need to know - to hopefully give you some insight into these issues. This week: (1.20) C...

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 transpires that the current work situation for healthcare professionals is not going to change any time soon. This is a marathon rather than a sprint. So how can we better look after ourselves to cope with this...

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 treating patients during the current pandemic, both on the frontline and in general practice? How do we recognise and break unhelpful anxious behaviour habits and stop fixating on the news? Our guests:
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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 those who are in hospital but don't have covid-19? In this podcast, Matt Morgan,honorary senior research fellow at Cardiff University, consultant in intensive care medicine and Partha Kar, consultant in diabe...