As the “noughties” draw to a close, Jeremy Laurance, health editor of The Independent, takes us through the stories that made the decade. Annabel Ferriman, BMJ news editor, chooses her favourite stories this week, and shares in some reminiscing with Jeremy.
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Health stories of the decade

This week the BMJ launches its Christmas appeal. Last year we chose Médecins Sans Frontières as our charity, and they’re such a good cause we’ve decided to team up with them again this year.

In this week’s podcast we’re joined by Fiona Bass, a nurse with MSF, who will tell us some tales from the frontline and how we can all help MSF continue their work.

BMJ Christmas Appeal for MSF

This week saw the King’s Fund annual conference. The title this year is “Transforming quality, creating value: developing health care for a new economic era”. With a worsening financial climate, what can healthcare do to continue its work of improving quality and safety and save money.

We ask Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts CEO, Cleve Killingsworth, about how the American insurance giant is tackling the issue.

Also this week Zosia Kmietowicz takes us through the news.

In the UK, death is a subject we steer clear of. Talking with a patient about the end of their life is uncomfortable, but necessary. A recent report from NCEPOD (the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death) called “Caring to the End” has highlighted why this conversation needs to improve. We hear from David Mason, one of the clinical coordinators for the report, about their findings.

Also this week, when end of life care hits the headlines it is almost inevitably about assisted dying. We hear about times when doctors in Switzerland or the Netherlands help a patient to die, but what about when they refuse?  Roeline Pasman and Dick Williems join us to discuss their study into the ways in which patients’ ideas of unbearable suffering may differ from their doctors’ ideas.

Birte Twisselmann takes us through this week’s news.

See also;
Concept of unbearable suffering in context of ungranted requests for euthanasia.
Deaths in Acute Hospitals: Caring to the End?

Home fetal heart monitors can help prospective parents bond with their babies, but do they offer false reassurance when things go wrong? In this week’s podcast Rebecca Coombes hears a cautionary tale from Abhijoy Chakladar, from Princess Royal Hospital in West Sussex.

Also this week, the NHS Modernisation Agency has been tasked with improving care for patients. Andrew Hutchings, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, tells us about his analysis of how effective the agency’s adult critical care initiative has been.

David Payne takes us through this week’s news.

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Evaluation of modernisation of adult critical care services in England
Dangers of listening to the fetal heart at home

BMJ deputy editor Trish Groves interviews Ike Iheanacho, editor of Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, about its report on the use of aspirin as a primary preventative. Kirsten Patrick, an associate editor at the BMJ, talks to Charis Eng from the Cleveland Clinic about the growth in commercially available genomic screening tests. And Sabreena Malik, clinical community editor of doc2doc, BMJ Group’s clinical community site, takes us through this week’s news.

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Aspirin for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease?
A practical guide to interpretation and clinical application of personal genomic screening

This week Duncan Jarvies talks to Paul Kelly about treating TB in East Timor, and to Kevin Deans about the link between deprivation and heart disease in Glasgow. Annabel Ferriman takes us through this week’s news.

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Differences in atherosclerosis according to area level socioeconomic deprivation
Food incentives to improve completion of tuberculosis treatment: randomised controlled trial in Dili, Timor-Leste

Political attention has been focused on providing universal health cover, but this can’t happen without curbing rising costs. In this week’s podcast Duncan Jarvies talks to Albert Mulley, from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, about how practice variation is driving up the cost of health care. Zosia Kmietowicz takes us through the news.

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Inconvenient truths about supplier induced demand and unwarranted variation in medical practice

This week Duncan Jarvies talks to Peter Fleming about his latest findings into the risk factors for SIDS. He also finds out from Michael Moore about what’s causing the rise in antidepressant prescription in the UK. Birte Twisselmann takes us through the news.

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Risk factors for SIDS
Explaining the rise in antidepressant prescribing

This week Kirsten Patrick talks to Cathie Sturgeon about the usefulness of tumour markers, Birte Twisselmann finds out from Jane Kim the cost effectiveness of vaccinating boys against HPV, and Deborah Cohen takes us through this week’s highlights.

See also;
Cost effectiveness analysis of including boys in a human papillomavirus vaccination programme in the United States
Serum tumour markers: how to order and interpret them
The cost of donated drugs