Professor Richard Lehman MA, BM BCh, MRCGP

Department of Applied Health Sciences
Honorary Professor of the Shared Understanding of Medicine

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 48532
Email: r.lehman@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @RichardLehman1

Address: Institute of Applied Health Research
Murray Learning Centre
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Richard was a full time NHS general practitioner for over 30 years and has previously held academic positions at Oxford and Yale. He is committed to an overarching view of medicine as a scientific and humane enterprise to be shared with patients and society. The term Shared Understanding of Medicine is a fusion of Evidence Based Medicine, Shared Decision Making and Patient-Centred Medicine.

Richard seeks to exemplify this approach in his 20 years of weekly blogs on the main medical journals (hosted on the BMJ website and selected in their print edition), in commentaries, editorials and previous work on heart failure and palliative care. His aim is to help the University of Birmingham become a leading global centre for disseminating the attitudes, skills and tools which can enhance the practice of medicine in partnership with patients.

Qualifications

MRCGP 1992
BM BCh 1975 Oxford University
BA (later MA) 1^st class hons English Language & Literature, Oxford University

Biography

Richard was educated at King Edward VIII School in Sheffield and at Oxford University, where he broke off medical studies to take a degree in English. He has remained a committed generalist ever since. Building up a large GP training practice in Banbury and commenting every week on the medical journals, he became aware of the increasing mismatch between the concerns of the quantitative academic literature and the diverse needs of patients.

End-of-life care for patients with heart failure is an example which he explored with Miriam Johnson in the first book of its kind. His interest in combining the insights of the patient experience literature led him to join the Health Experiences Group at Oxford immediately after retiring from full-time practice, and then to spend a year at Yale working on the goals of patient-centred outcomes research and data-sharing.

He has subsequently been active in promoting shared decision making through various UK bodies and in promoting the work of the James Lind Alliance.

Postgraduate supervision

Available for supervision:

Shared decision making
End of life care for non-cancer conditions
Communication in primary and palliative care
Data sharing from clinical trials
Medical humanities

Research

Research Institutes

Institute of Applied Health Research

Other activities

Yale University Open Data Access Project (YODA): consultant member
Academy of Medical Royal Colleges Choosing Wisely UK initiative: steering group and Shared Decision Making committee member
The BMJ: weekly columnist
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence: Shared Decision Making steering group member
All Trials: steering group member
Cochrane UK: senior advisory fellow in primary care 2014-7

Publications

Book

Lehman R, Johnson M, 'Heart Failure and Palliative Care: a team approach with Miriam Johnson' 2006, 2nd ed. CRC Press. 2016. CRC Press

Selected publications

Lehman R. 'Sharing as the Future of Medicine'. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177(9):1237–1238. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.2371

Locock L, Lehman R, Epstein RM. 'Sharing Experiences of Illness and Care'. JAMA Intern Med. 2017 Sep 1;177(9):1249-1250. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.1935.

Low J, Ross JS, Ritchie JD, Gross CP, Lehman R, Lin H, Fu R, Stewart LA, Krumholz HM. 'Comparison of two independent systematic reviews of trials of recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 (rhBMP-2): the Yale Open Data Access Medtronic Project'. Syst Rev. 2017 Feb 15;6(1):28. doi: 10.1186/s13643-017-0422-x.

Ross JS, Ritchie JD, Finn E, Desai NR, Lehman R, Krumholz HM, 'Data sharing through an NIH central database repository: a cross-sectional survey of BioLINCC users'. Gross CP. BMJ Open. 2016 Sep 26;6(9):e012769. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012769.

Malhotra A, Maughan D, Ansell J, Lehman R, Henderson A, Gray M, Stephenson T, Bailey S. 'Choosing Wisely in the UK: reducing the harms of too much medicine'. BMJ. 2015 May 12;350:h2308. doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2308.

McCartney M, Treadwell J, Maskrey N, Lehman R.'Making evidence based medicine work for individual patients'. BMJ. 2016 May 16;353:i2452. doi: 10.1136/bmj.i2452.

Barbour V, Burch D, Godlee F, Heneghan C, Lehman R, Perera R, Ross JS, Schroter S. 'Characterisation of trials where marketing purposes have been influential in study design: a descriptive study'.Trials. 2016 Jan 21;17:31. doi: 10.1186/s13063-015-1107-1.

Naci H, Lehman R, Wouters OJ, Goldacre B, Yudkin JS. 'Rethinking the appraisal and approval of drugs for type 2 diabetes'.BMJ. 2015 Oct 9;351:h5260. doi: 10.1136/bmj.h5260. Review

Lehman R, Tejani AM, McCormack J, Perry T, Yudkin JS. 'Ten Commandments for patient-centred treatment'. Br J Gen Pract. 2015 Oct;65(639):532-3. doi: 10.3399/bjgp15X687001.

Krumholz HM, Ross JS, Gross CP, Emanuel EJ, Hodshon B, Ritchie JD, Low JB, Lehman R. 'A historic moment for open science: the Yale University Open Data Access project and medtronic'. Ann Intern Med. 2013 Jun 18;158(12):910-1. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-158-12-201306180-00009

Lehman R. 'Self monitoring of glucose in Type 2 diabetes: guidelines fail to reflect evidence'. Diabet Med. 2012 Oct;29(10):1225. doi: 10.1111/j.1464-5491.2012.03654.x

Lehman R, Loder E. 'Missing clinical trial data'. BMJ. 2012 Jan 3;344:d8158. doi: 10.1136/bmj.d8158

Lehman R, Pinder S. 'Streptococcal perianal infection in children'. BMJ. 2009 May 5;338:b1517. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b1517.

Lehman R, Krumholz HM.'Tight control of blood glucose in long standing type 2 diabetes'. BMJ. 2009 Mar 5;338:b800. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b800.

Doust J, Lehman R, Glasziou P. 'The role of BNP testing in heart failure'. Am Fam Physician. 2006 Dec 1;74(11):1893-8. Review

Lehman R, Doust J, Glasziou P. 'Cardiac impairment or heart failure?' BMJ. 2005 Aug 20;331(7514):415-6.

Rose C, Wallace L, Dickson R, Ayres J, Lehman R, Searle Y, Burge PS. 'The most effective psychologically-based treatments to reduce anxiety and panic in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): a systematic review'. Patient Educ Couns. 2002 Aug;47(4):311-8.

Landray MJ, Lehman R, Arnold I. 'Measuring brain natriuretic peptide in suspected left ventricular systolic dysfunction in general practice: cross-sectional study'. BMJ. 2000 Apr 8;320(7240):985-6.

View all publications in research portal