Medicine and Science from The BMJ

Abi Rimmer, BMJ Careers reporter, talks to junior doctors on the picket line at Northwick Park Hospital. Read her report: http://bmj.co/1qydmFq

The Francis report, the Berwick report, the Keogh review - all of these have highlighted how important learning from mistakes is in healthcare. Reporting incidents is key to this, and in this podcast Jen Perry, from BMJ Quality, tells Harriet Vickers the whats, hows and whys of incident reporting. And Emily Hotton, previously a foundation doctor at Royal United Hospital Bath, UK, talks about how h...

Plan, do, study, act cycles, or PDSA cycles, are the basis of many quality improvement projects, they're a model to trial changes and feed the lessons from each test into the next. Why are they a popular method, and how do you get the best out of them? And what on earth happens when they explode? Harriet Vickers asks Julie Reed, National Institute for Healthcare Research CLAHRC (Collaboration for...

As France has moved in recent weeks to clear camps where migrants stay while trying to cross illegally into Britain, Médecins Sans Frontières has just opened a new one. Sophie Arie talks to Caroline Gollé, medical coordinator at the Médecins Sans Frontières​ La Linière camp​. Read more about the camp: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1696

Depression in pregnancy affects up to 10% of women, a rate only slightly lower than in the postpartum period. Yet, as few as 20% of pregnant women with depression receive adequate treatment. Louise Howard, professor in women’s mental health at King's College London, joins us to discuss the clinical review on depression in pregnancy. Read the full article: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1547

However well intentioned, working in detention centres amounts to complicity in torture, says David Berger, a district medical officer in emergency medicine at Broome Hospital in Australia. However, Steven Miles, chair in bioethics at the University of Minnesota thinks that they play an important role in telling the world about conditions in these camps. Read the full debate: http://www.bmj.com/co...

Jeremy Hunt is a health secretary under pressure. In this exclusive interview with The BMJ’s editor in chief Fiona Godlee, the man who could soon become England's longest serving health secretary insists he has more to give. The steady hand brought in to steer the NHS away from the front pages has been shaking in recent months, but the grip seems to be intact. As he greets The BMJ in his Whitehall...

Nick Oliver, consultant diabetologist at Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust and Philippa Cooper, who has type I diabetes, join us to explain how structured education works for patients, and give tips on self management. Read the full review: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i998

Gareth Iacobucci talks to Candace Imison, director of policy at The Nuffield Trust, about the problems facing GPs, and how primary care could be changed. "5 minutes with... Candace Imison": http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1378

As the junior doctors in England strike, concerns for the workforce are foremost in the minds of those running the NHS. A summary is available here: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1510 In The BMJ roundtable, recorded at the Nuffield Trust Health Policy Summit on Friday 4 March 2016, we asked our participants if they think the NHS is in crisis, and what they think can be done to help those wor...

“Juliet”, a woman living in London, was diagnosed with a mysterious illness in November 2015, Ian Cropley, a consultant in infectious disease from The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, was there to investigate. In this podcast, we find out how Zika, once a little known virus causing a rash and fever, has subsequently become a global health emergency. We also discuss how the infection is link...

How should health professionals engage with this increasingly popular but unproved practice? Aubrey Cunnington, a consultant paediatrician from Imperial College London joins us to discuss. Read the full editorial: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i227

The Department of Health is proposing to extend charging for migrants into some NHS primary care services and emergency departments. Although the government asserts that the NHS is “overly generous to those who have only a temporary relationship with the UK,” Lucy Jones, UK lead for Doctors of the World says these proposals will disproportionately harm vulnerable undocumented migrants. Read the fu...

In recent weeks, the firearms controversy has again lit up the media in the United States, with clarification that anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks. But, argues Fred Rivara from the Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, we may never know its effects because of the continuing ban...

This week, junior doctors in England have taken industrial action for the second time in as many months after failing to reach agreement with the government over their proposed new contract. Tom Moberley and Abi Rimmer, from BMJ Careers, went to the picket lines at Northwick Park Hospital, and University Hospital Lewisham to talk to the doctors, and their supporters. Keep up to date with the junio...

The Rapid diagnostic tests have the potential to reduce the overtreatment of malaria by 95%, but time and extensive logistical, behavioural, and technical interventions may be required to achieve this. Eleanor Ochodo from the Centre for Evidence-Based Health Care, at Stellenbosch University, joins us to discuss. Read the full article: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i107

Iqbal Malik, consultant cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, joins Mabel Chew to discuss the role of angioplasty and stenting in patients with stable angina. Read the full article online: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i205

James Smoliga, from High Point University, North Carolina, and Ken Rundell, from The Commonwealth Medical College, Pennsylvania, join us to discuss how to test for, and manage, exercise induced bronchoconstriction, and particularly how to distinguish it from other respiratory conditions. Read the full review at http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6951

Are you having a dry January? In this podcast Ian Gilmore, honorary professor at Liverpool University, and Ian Hamilton, a lecturer in the Department of Health Sciences at York University, debate whether campaigns such as this have any public health benefit. Read the full head to head article: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i143

Around half of people aged over 75 meet the diagnostic criteria for chronic kidney disease (CKD), but there is debate about what this means for patients as only a proportion of elderly people with CKD will have clinically important outcomes as a result. In this podcast, Dr Arif Khwaja argues that for CKD in the elderly, we should focus on patient centered outcomes rather than applying population r...

The claim that cancer screening saves lives is based on fewer deaths due to the target cancer. Vinay Prasad, assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, joins us to argue that reductions in overall mortality should be the benchmark and call for higher standards of evidence for cancer screening. Read the full analysis: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6080

General practice is similar in the Netherlands and the UK yet it appeals far more to young Dutch doctors than to their British counterparts. In collaboration with the Dutch medical journal Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, Roger Damoiseaux, professor of general practice, and Margaret McCartney, Glasgow GP and The BMJ columnist, met to try to work out why. Sophie Arie reports Read the featur...

Is the Christmas sprit divinely inspired, or does it reside within the body? Researchers from Denmark have tried to answer that age-old philosophical question with fMRI. Bryan Haddock, medical physicist at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen joins us to explain what they found. Read the full research: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.h6266

Despite what hollywood says, science has proven that British teeth are actually better than American. Richard Watt, head of the Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL explains how they came to that conclusion. Read the full research: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.h6543

A lot of attention has been paid to Russian president Vladimir Putin recently, but a group of researchers from The Netherlands are more interested in his walk than his intervention in Syria. Bastiaan Bloem, medical director of the Parkinson's Centre in Nijmegen, joins us to explain more. http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6141