“We’ve had a new admission into bed 3” “Great, I’ll be right there, what’s wrong with them?” “He’s got multiorgan failure but was intubated mainly for respiratory failure” “Ah ok, what’s wrong with him?” “ARDS” “Caused by what?” “Sepsis I think” “From what?” “Pneumonia” “What type?” “Um . . .” “Don’t worry, let’s see him […]
Yesterday as I flew home from teaching in Amsterdam for the last time, I wondered what I might have achieved in six (or perhaps it’s seven) years of teaching. Twice a year at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen) I have taught about non-communicable disease (NCD) on the “tropical doctors’ course,” […]
Over the past four weeks I have been exploring models of translational research using the metaphor of crossing bridges. I started by exploring the meanings of translation. It comes from the Latin noun translatio, from translatum, the irregular supine form of the verb transferre, to carry or cause to be carried from one place to […]
The NHS is legally committed to reducing its carbon consumption by 80% by 2050, but the route to that destination is far from clear. The leaders in trying to find a practical route are Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, and I went to visit them in Brighton. The trust covers Brighton and Hove, West Sussex, and […]
After a consultation on changes to its methods for appraising health technologies, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has gone public with its way forward. As discussed previously, the consultation sought views on four items: Introduce a “fast track” NICE technology appraisal process for the most promising new technologies, which fall below an incremental cost […]
I have been talking about failure a lot at the moment. How it should be encouraged and celebrated. We all do it often enough, so we might as well try to enjoy it. Being open to failure and learning from it is a key skill in quality improvement (QI). The more you do it, the […]
To recap: over the past three weeks I have used the metaphor of crossing bridges in discussing translational research in clinical medicine; derived a model of it from definitions in the Cooksey report; and, recognising its weaknesses, modified the model based on later descriptions. However, the second model still has weaknesses. For example, it retains […]
Bangladeshis love to sing, dance, make music, recite poetry, talk, eat, and let off steam. So icddr,b day, the day of what may be the largest health research institution in a low income country, centres on performance—on a stage erected in the car park. And the two highlights of the day were performances of two […]
As an intensive care consultant, the risk of “burnout” is ever present. Everyday, I will deliver devastating news to families when they least expect it. I will often make life changing decisions with limited information in a time critical manner. I will have passionate debates with other medical specialties over what is best for patients. […]
One of the conundrums of peer review is that reviewers need to be knowledgeable about the research being reported but shouldn’t have conflicts of interest. The trouble is that the best-qualified people are often too closely connected to either the research or the authors. This problem is amplified in small research fields and for journals […]