Nov 21, 2016
In Critical Care we deal with death on a regular basis and although it seems an ‘on or off’ issue where you are either dead or you are not, nothing is more true. Not only physicians but scientists, philosophers, writers and theologians have been debating about the subject for as long as we have become aware of the...
Nov 20, 2016
Diagnostic medicine is not simple – Casey Parker discusses the finer points of the diagnostic process in critical care.
Diagnosis is not black and white. The world is not black and white. It is all shades of grey and about probability.
One tool that clinicians have to deal with probability is Bayes’ theorem. Since...
Nov 17, 2016
Kate Prior conveys the lessons she has learnt working as a doctor as part of the Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) in Afghanistan.
“Unexpected survivors” are those patients who, according to their injury severity score, should die of their injuries but they survive against the odds.
The years of conflict in...
Nov 15, 2016
Peer review is at the heart of science. Yet, as Richard Smith explains in this talk, there are many problems with peer reviewed research. As Richard argues, peer review is not an evidence-based process, but rather a faith-based process. Is it time for something different? Peer review has two main functions: 1) Quality...
Nov 14, 2016
The exposure of fabricated numbers in published papers by eagle-eyed readers has been due to sporadic serendipity. I am going to describe a semi-automated method that you can take away with you to do some sleuthing. I am going to describe what I found when I analysed over 4500...