Rising cases of tuberculosis (TB) and measles and an intense influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) season were seen in England in 2024-25, reiterating the fact that “we cannot be complacent,...

The UK government has announced plans to slash £5bn from the country’s welfare bill by 2030 as part of radical reforms designed to help more people with disabilities or long term sickness back into work. Ministers said that the proposals (see box), set out in a green paper,1 would fix the country’s “broken” welfare system in which one in 10 people of working age now claim a sickness or disability benefit, with 2.8 million people out of work because of long term sickness. Announcing the reforms in parliament on 18 March, the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, said that an additional £1bn investment would be made available to provide tailored support to help people with disabilities or long term health conditions back into employment. But health and care leaders and charities said that the scale of the cuts risked removing vital support from those who needed it and could increase demand on the NHS. Paul Kissack, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which works to …

Jacqui Wise examines the “high stakes move” by ministers to embark on another reorganisation of the health service NHS England was created by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government as...

Doctors were left feeling angry and unsupported after NHS leaders failed to take the threat of racism and Islamophobia seriously. Annabel Sowemimo and Zosia Kmietowicz report Last summer an estimated...

They do. And trials are underway to put this old cliché to the test. It’s no joke. A pilot study has been launched to see if comedy on prescription, as an alternative to antidepressants for patients ...

Doctors’ leaders are warning that a new NHS England review of all postgraduate medical training must deliver “clear reform” and not be a token “listening exercise.” England’s chief medical officer Ch...

Five years ago a BMJ investigation found that medical students were being let down by poor monitoring and responses to complaints of racism. Gareth Iacobucci repeated the exercise to see whether any p...

A perception of endemic discrimination persists When we first highlighted the problem of racial discrimination in the medical profession in 1993, we were arrested by the police for making fraudulent ...

The news that on 31 January 2025 the Trump administration instructed scientists employed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to withdraw or retract articles from medical and sci...

Confronting poor behaviour from someone you work with can seem difficult but there are ways to respond, Abi Rimmer hears Rakesh Patel, professor of medical education and head of the bachelor of medic...

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed a new law on 3 February to further defend New York doctors who prescribe abortion medication by telehealth to patients who live in states that ban abortion....

An independent investigation by a panel of 14 international experts into the cause of injury and death of the babies Lucy Letby is convicted of murdering or attempting to murder has claimed that there...

AI presents some exciting opportunities for the NHS, but leaders need to drive the technology and not the other way round, reports Chris Stokel-Walker Artificial intelligence will be a gamechanger w...

Siobhán O’Sullivan cites AI and trust as the ethical challenges of today—and decries the back seat that medical ethics is often pushed into I was working in translational medicine at the Royal Free H...

Reports that a “mysterious” covid-like virus is overwhelming Chinese hospitals have made international headlines. Is human metapneumovirus (HMPV) a common winter bug that is following an expected seas...

We analyse two centuries of scholarly work

Pilot medical apprenticeship programmes in England, which were being trialled as a new route into the profession, have been paused by the government. Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, one of the ...

Absolutely. As the name suggests, Veganuary encourages people to go vegan at the start of every year. Exactly! And eating more leaves too. The benefits of a plant based diet are well documented.1 It’...

Can it really turn any document into a podcast? And if it can, will it be any good?

The maker of weight-loss and diabetes drugs has supercharged the Danish economy — but other businesses complain that’s left them struggling to hire staff.

Not really. I follow Oscar Wilde: “Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil.” Possibly, but the psychological literature isn’t terribly encouraging. One study showed that 22% of pe...

Health and human rights organisations have condemned the Taliban’s ban on women from attending nursing and midwifery training institutes in Afghanistan. Non-governmental organisation Human Rights Wat...

You may be disappointed. The race for the Christmas number one has an unlikely new contender in the shape of Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey. Not as far as I know—but don’t rule anything out when it...

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The historic vote by MPs has paved the way to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. Clare Dyer examines what effects the potential law change would have on the medical profession Terminally i...

You may be disappointed. The race for the Christmas number one has an unlikely new contender in the shape of Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey. Not as far as I know—but don’t rule anything out when it...

The Royal College of General Practitioners has voted to go back to its members to poll them on whether it should shift from its current stance of opposing a change in the law on assisted dying. At th...

International talks to cut plastic pollution collapsed in the early hours of 2 December in what critics are billing as another triumph for the fossil fuel lobby. The week long negotiations in Busan, S...

Four months after GPs in England voted in favour of taking collective action over contractual terms and funding,1 local medical committee (LMC) representatives gathered for their annual conference on ...