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 […]
Category: archimedes
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 […]
“Compared to standard care”
There’s a decent argument in the analysis of quantitative studies of therapies, particularly using RCT designs, that says that we should be looking at the totality of unbiased evidence (systematic reviews) rather than looking at individual, cherry-picked, studies. The best estimate from this come from a pooling of all the results: meta-analysis. There’s a challenge to this, […]
The despair of the box-ticking paediatrican
So, as the annual assessment of learning by paediatric trainees reached fever pitch in many ares of the UK, a question rang out across Twitter: In (trainees approaching ARCP), does (shoehorning logbook to curriculum) compared to (reflecting on clinical experiences) improve outcomes? And while this, I feel, is more of an emotional outpouring to garner […]
StatsMiniBlog: Rethinking meta-analysis
The concept of meta-analysis was addressed previously, essentially pulling together data from a range of different studies and assuming that they are only (fundamentally) different by chance, or differ by real things too as well as chance, and you’re seeking an average effect across the average of these differences. The maths under this takes each study as […]
When a test isn’t a test
There are many reasons why we request tests, in medicine. One imaginary patient’s journey picks up a number of them. Take a patient who presents with a painless lump on their arm, who’s tired and a bit pale & washed out. You might send a series of blood tests, including a full blood count to […]
Different but similar. Life-limiting long-term conditions in children.
One of the great professional joys of a part-time life in or about paediatric palliative care is being made constantly aware of how much there is in the world that I know next to nothing about. (One of the great personal joys is being able to do something that improves a short life, within a multi-professional […]
Boundary spanning in collaborative networks. Asleep yet?
Sometimes you need a massive push to take you beyond a title into reading a paper. (Well, when I say sometimes, I mean ‘most times’. Often, the push can be the patient that has driven you to start looking. Sometimes the push is the grand round or journal club you need to present. Rarely, it’s […]
StatsMiniBlog: ROC plots
A (while ago) we published an explanatory page about ROC plots in the Education and Practice journal. There are a few great reasons why we should replicate it here: 1. So people can read it more easily 2. Because it fits into the stuttering series on diagnostics 3. It saves me having to write the […]