BMJ  2005;330 (11 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7504.0-g

Editor's choice

More miles, fewer biscuits

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editing is a sedentary profession. We sit at our computers doling out decisions and emailing colleagues sitting at the next desk. We might, if the mood takes us, wander out for a spot of lunch before the afternoon's editorial meeting, at which we pick over piles of manuscripts and plates of BMA biscuits. Only the stress of it all keeps us thin.

Hospital medicine is by comparison far from sedentary. As house officers in the mid-1980s we averaged several miles a day along the hospital corridors. I don't know what the current mileage is but the European Working Time Directive is likely to have reduced it to some extent, cutting the miles walked by junior doctors as well as the hours worked. More importantly, as many have commented in the seven years since it became law in the UK, the directive has dramatically reduced the available time for training, created . . . [Full text of this article]

Fiona Godlee, editor

(fgodlee@bmj.com)


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