I am a glutton for podcasts, occasionally medical, but often way off this mark (sociology, philosophy & rugby league would fall into this category), yet they frequently play into each other. Some of you will recall this, as I note that when I can’t concentrate on a podcast, I know I’m becoming overloaded/over worried and need to step […]
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Top tips for detecting adverse events in paediatrics
How can we determine the safety if anything we do in paediatric prescribing? For chronic conditions, we’re generally pretty sure that if we let it wind on, it will harm the child. If we treat it, we’ll be managing the disease but causing adversity. The balance is making this tip where the good stuff overwhelms the […]
Basics. Why bother with systematic reviews?
If you’ve only recently bumped into this blog, you may not be aware of the near-obsessive compulsion for us to ask “Is there a systematic review of that?” at any opportunity. Why is this the case? Well, partly it’s the job. Mostly it’s because systematic reviews give us the best answers to our questions … and […]
How can we share treatment decisions?
I guess part of me wants to start this blog with “Never knowingly topical”, but in the UK an as yet unclear explosion of media interest has been generated around decision making and a child with a brain tumour. Those who want to can find out more via reputable news sites – as a staunch […]
Which O for PICO?
We’ve mentioned before about the COMET initiative, that was born from lots of work in rheumatology, and seeks to standardise a core set of outcomes collected in clinical trials so that the trial Measures things of importance to patients, clinicians and researchers and Provides a degree of homogeneity that makes systematic reviews more powerful […]
A picture paints a thousand words
Pretty much sure that you’ve all hit something complicated and, after trying to explain it, have grabbed pencil, paper and said something like “Look, you see, it’s …” And your picture may be completely unlike the thing you’re describing. Well, hot on the tails of our Archi blog about the challenges with […]
No Numbers Required: Qualitative research
Hello everyone. Holidays are lovely things, and I would greatly advise everyone to take one. A proper one, where you switch off your emails (?perhaps even deleting those that arrive?), ignore your work texts and generally hide in a work-free hole for a while. You might think about doing this every weekend you’re not working, or […]
What stops us getting more people into clinical trials?
It may not have escaped your notice as you travel between different areas of the hospitals in which you work that there appear to be some things that have more clinical trial activity going on than others. There have been many things written on why this might be, including a very persuasive paper* that argues for […]
Words, listening, and the art of applying the general to the specific
A little bit of a swirl around a decade-old paper by @iona_heath on the trouble with turning a patient’s experience into something that might require medically fixing that was floated about twitter recently. The paper, which is densely written and has lots of lovely quotes from proper writers, and speak of many aspects of doctoring, holds to a […]
StatsMiniBlog: Kappa
After a short pause while brain cells were diverted elsewhere, we’re returning with the critically acclaimed (well, slightly positively tweeted) StatsMiniBlog series. (As an aside – do let me know via comments, Facebook or Twitter if there’s an issue you’d like to see covered) Kappa (κ) is a measure of agreement, usually between two observers […]