“But what’s wrong with him, doctor?” The constant refrain from many a consulting room is not “How can you make her better?” but “Can you name the problem so I can own and understand it?”. When addressing this need we will each develop our own approaches; some of us will explore differentials, others state the […]
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StatsMiniBlog: Exact vs. approximate
You may well come across descriptions in the stats parts of papers that describe how the authors have derived their confidence intervals using an exact method. Sounds very good, doesn’t it? Precise to the most precicestness. And yet … sometimes an approximate confidence interval is better. You see, it all means what ‘exact’ exactly refers […]
Guest Blog. Safeguarding (and) Children’s Rights
This January sees the UK submitting its fifth periodic report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child outlining the progress over the last 5 years the UK has made in meeting its obligations to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The UNCRC is an excellent piece of child […]
Basics. How much is enough?
We’ve approached EBM by thinking about it as a framework for thinking, not a checklist to tick though. It’s the combination of patients views, clinical expertise and relevant research. The process is of asking, acquiring, appraising, applying and assessing. But when it comes to applying evidence to answer a question – how much is enough? […]
Guest Post. Positive feedback
It seems almost every day that a negative healthcare story makes its way into the headlines; missed diagnoses; missed opportunities; repeated failings that suggest a lack of learning from previous serious incidents. While the issues raised by these stories may be significant, the articles rarely present a balanced account. The distorted information is presented for […]
#ADC_JC discusses a controversial study
December’s #ADC_JC looked at a paper suggesting that febrile seizures were linked to the development of ADHD. Everyone enjoyed getting their teeth into this paper – read the key points (and main criticisms!) in our storify. Next month will see us examining the role of doctors in end-of-life decision making, happening at 9pm (UK) on Thursday […]
StatsMiniBlog. Regression
Now, regression is a bad thing if we’re talking development. It might be any number of really difficult to pronounce neurological conditions, or severe psychological trauma, or abuse/neglect. It’s not going to be good. In statistics, it’s not quite the same. Regression is quite often a good thing. But what is it? […]
Basics. RR, OR and the like
Just a few posts ago, we introduced the idea of NNT as being an ‘absolute’ measure of how effective a treatment is; that is, the number of folk needed to treat to get one extra good result, compared to something else. This can be used to balance against stuff that might be negative – such […]
How much should we believe in autonomy?
We’ll all remember that we are meant, with grown-ups, to allow the patient to make a choice about their care. When the patient is not really due to be in the atmosphere for another 2 months, and hasn’t quite learned to open its eyes rather let alone discuss UVC vs Groshong lines, then we’re sort […]
Basics. NNT
The NNT – number needed to treat – is thought by many to be a central core of EBMing. (I’d argue that the numbers in EBM are only a small part of the equation – and that understanding the question and the biases inherent in the study design are greater – but I’d still agree […]