Is sim training enough?

In a new article in the ADC a group of authors from Liverpool, UK, have examined the retention of newborn resuscitation skills following a simulation-based training programme (NLS – Newborn Life Support). They undertook extensive follow-up of participants and turned up ‘on the job’ and re-examinined the health care professionals at their place of work. They showed […]

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Think systems.

So this is a quick video introduction to a theme we’ll be visiting on & off, probably forever, about the psychology of cognition — how we think — and how this affects our medical decisions. This link came from Neil Maskrey via the EBH listserv, and if you’ve not seen it before watch it with […]

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GRADE it.

As mentioned quite some time ago, there are a number of ways of approaching the ideas of indicating the strength of evidence behind recommendations. Archi has stuck with a rather old, but easy-to-follow version from the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford. During the decade of Archi’s existence there’s been the steady development of […]

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Another brick out of the wall.

Unpopular things are tricky, aren’t they. Like saying “Abstinence programmes for sex education don’t help reduce unwanted pregnancy” or “dummy use in babies reduced SIDS and didn’t really cause funny teeth “. Here’s another one – breast feeding probably doesn’t reduce obesity rates in later childhood. The results of an 11 year follow up of […]

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Worried about sepsis. Very worried.

I have spent my entire professional career giving boluses of fluid to patients with septic shock, from the very first paediatric patient I met on call (“You’re the paed? We need you, this lad’s sick.”) through imprints of 50ml syringes squeezed into infants to over-the-phone requests to run another 500 ml of saline in while […]

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