BMJ  2006;332 (14 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7533.0-f

Editor's choice

Swept along by the tide

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

Do health managers read the BMJ? A member of our editorial board tells me that an otherwise evidence-free meeting of senior healthcare managers was illuminated by someone brandishing recent BMJ articles on primary care and deprivation. Whether they changed the outcome of the meeting he does not relate, but I will use this opportunity to tell authors that the BMJ is keenly interested in publishing research that will help improve healthcare systems—variously called effectiveness research, quality improvement, or implementation science.

Faced with imperfect delivery of health care, it's natural to want to change things and to hope that change will be for the better. But Ann McDonnell and colleagues (p 109) warn that enthusiasm for organisational change can undermine attempts at evaluation and can blind people to potential downsides. Acute pain teams and NHS Direct were both top down innovations that were swiftly rolled out across the . . . [Full text of this article]

Fiona Godlee, editor

(fgodlee@bmj.com)


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