Medicine and Science from The BMJ

The Deep Breath talking wellbeing evidence round-up of the year.

In this end-of-year podcast from Deep Breath In, we're bringing you a light hearted look back at 2020, and trying to remember some of the non-covid-19 medicine that has crossed our desks.
This festive quiz features the deep breath in gang, as well as Cat Chatfield from the Wellbeing podcast, and Helen Macdonald from our Talk Evidence podcasts.
Reading list;
Thyroid disease assessment and management: summary of NICE guidance
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m41
Thyroid hormones treatment for subclinical hypothyroidism: a clinical practice guideline
https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l2006
Judd Brewer's advice for coping with burnout
https://drjud.com/

Talking Christmas evidence - how Christmas research is chosen

If you've had time to digest this year's Christmas edition of The BMJ, you might have wondered how those papers get into The BMJ.
Well in this Talk Evidence podcast, Helen Macdonald, UK research editor at The BMJ talks to two of her research team colleagues, John Fletcher and Tim Feeney, as they talk through why they chose their favourite papers.
Toxicological analysis of George’s marvellous medicine
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4467
Does medicine run in the family—evidence from three generations of physicians in Sweden
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4453
The time to act is now
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4143

Wellbeing - Human factors, and Christmas Logistics

How do human behaviours affect patient outcomes? And what has that got to do with Christmas?
Graham Shaw, director of Critical Factors, and Peter Brennan, a maxillofacial surgeon in Portsmouth, join us to explain what human factors are, why they’re not a bigger part of medical training, and talk about their importance as the NHS comes under greater and greater pressure because of the surge in covid-19 cases.
They also offer a word of advice to Santa, about making sure a festive never-event never happens.
www.bmj.com/wellbeing

Food insecurity in the 6th largest economy

Every year, the BMJ has a charity appeal - we’ve regularly focused on organisations like MSF, or Lifebox - providing support to areas of the world which don’t have good healthcare provision… This year though, covid-19 has changed everything - and we’re focussed inwards, on the UK.
With growing unemployment, sections of the population being laid off, and with the well documented delays in receiving universal credit - food insecurity has become a major issue in the sixth largest economy in the world.
In this podcast Martin Caraher, emeritus professor of food and health policy at City University of London, explains how this crisis is a long time coming, and the result of the inattention of successive governments to the issue of hunger.
We also hear from Sabine Goodwin, coordinator of the Independent Food Aid Network, the recipients of this years award funds, about how the their network is being affected by the covid-19 pandemic, and how your money will be used to supports food banks, and advocate for their obsolescence
Donate the the Independent Food Aid Network here:
https://www.foodaidnetwork.org.uk/bmj

The soundscape of a hospital

Until hear death in 2019, Annabel and her husband James Weaver, spent a lot of time together in hospitals - in patient and outpatient wards, waiting in makeshift waiting rooms in corridors and atriums. And while you or I might notice things about the way in which the hospital looks - James and Annabel noticed the way in which is sounded.
James is perusing a PhD at Queen Mary University of London into acoustics and the intelligibility of sound - and in this podcast we delve into the sound of a hospital, and why it can make communication between staff and patients so hard.
Read James's Christmas article, The sound of medicine
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4682

Rob Poynton wants you to pause

Robert Poynton is an associate fellow of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, and author of books designed to help people work in ways which help both their career and wellbeing.
In this wellbeing podcast, we focus on "Do Pause; you are not a to do list" - a book that Cat has had on her to do list for months.
Rob explain to us what the concept of "pausing" is, and why he thinks a small gesture can have a significant effect on our ability to deal with the stresses of day to day work life.
Rob's books are available on Bookshop
Do Pause
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/98/9781907974632
Do Improvise
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/98/9781907974014

Coronavirus second wave - Should we cancel Christmas?

As London and some neighbouring counties move up to tier 3, and Germany, Italy and The Netherlands impose tighter restrictions over over the coming days of Christmas, in this podcast we ask - should Christmas gatherings be cancelled?
In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, and Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire.
They're joined by Mike Tildesley, reader in mathematics at Warwick School of Life Sciences, who models infectious disease spread.
They discuss why the key to controlling is pruning network connections - but why that concept hasn't been well explained to the public, what's happening in Cardiff, where ICU is running at 120% capacity, and how the vaccine roll out is being coordinated in primary care.
For more on the pandemic
www.bmj.com/coronavirus

Inside a vaccine trial

The last few weeks we’ve been feverish in our coverage of vaccines - the evidence base for them is, how they’ve been evaluated and licensed, and who’s going to get them first.
But what we’ve not covered much is what it’s like to do, and take part in, a vaccine trial.
In this special podcast, we’re going to hear from John Wright, director of the Bradford Institute of Health Research. He’s been keeping a “doctors diary” for BBC radio, and in this podcast we’re doing a deeper dive into that - and finding out about the people working on, and volunteering to test, a corona virus vaccine.

Talk evidence covid-19 update - poor public messaging, and vaccine approval data

The vaccines are being rolled out - but approval is still on an emergency basis, and the evidence underpinning those decisions is only just becoming available for scrutiny.
In this podcast we talk to Baruch Fischhoff, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on public health communication about how that messaging should be done.
Peter Doshi, associate editor at The BMJ, and vaccine regulation researcher also joins us to talk about the data now released on the vaccine trials - what questions does it raise, and what are the next steps for researching safety.
For more on The BMJ's covid-19 coverage www.bmj.com/coronavirus

Coronavirus second wave - the vaccine’s here, but the pandemic isn’t over

As the first people outside of a trial have started receiving Pfizer's sars-cov-2 vaccine, including Matt, but that's not the end of the story for the pandemic, there are still logistics of rollout, plus treating those who have already contracted the disease.
In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to Matt Morgan, a consultant in a intensive care medicine in Cardiff, and Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire.
They discuss why it's impossible to get the vaccine into care homes, because of the need for very low temperature storage, why the survival rate in ICU has gone down, and how messaging on the non-vaccine ways of preventing spread need to be tightened up, especially now.
For more of The BMJ’s covid-19 coverage.
www.bmj.com/coronavirus