Measuring consentability

So I’m inventing words here. Could be worse though, could be “stooling” for “having a poo” or “pedagogy” for .. well, whatever you want it to mean when you really mean “be quiet and listen”. But how can you judge if a child / young person is sufficiently aware of ‘stuff’ to be able to […]

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What moved you to move?

When was the last time you changed your behaviour? (I’m not talking here of speaking differently to your Mum in Urdu, your sister in Londoneese and your patient in Glaswegian …) When did you last decide “I am doing THIS/THAT thing differently from now on.” Got one? Right. Why did you do it? Take 30 […]

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Ignore the platelet count in HSP if you’re wondering about kidneys

Every now & then you bump into something that makes your heart sing. For me, I sometimes struggle to come up with good examples of an ‘EBM’ tennet – for instance, the difference between statistical and clinical significance – which has an actual origin. Well, in a paper entitled Platelet Counts in Children With Henoch–Schonlein Purpura—Relationship […]

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The crumbling of the pyramid of evidence

The ‘old way’ of thinking about the hierarchy of evidence was classically envisaged as a systematic review at the top, falling through RCT, cohorts and case-control to expert opinion (and below that, in some iterations, case law & legislative decisions). There’s been a move against this, with the GRADE system as explained recently in our popular […]

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Always question your question

I was recently at a wonderful conference in Toronto, where 1900 folk interested in childhood cancer came together to learn, argue, network, present and be merry – #SIOP2014. There was a particularly interesting debate between two very clever oncologists about whether or not we should use antifungal prophylaxis in children with AML and post-stem-cell-transplant. (Both are […]

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