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The risks and benefits of statins.   An interesting if impenetrable paper this year looked at the risk/benefit profile of statins in different age groups and for four different statins.   The paper itself was scarcely readable unless you are familiar with advanced statistics and biomedical jargon but the conclusions bear discussion.   First, someRead more

  I came upon this post by Dr Caldwell, a fellow twitteree. I think this summarises beautifully the essential components of a good consultation. We do well to remember them. 1 The patient should be as prepared as possible. 2 The clinician should be as prepared as possible. 3 The clinician should know the personRead more

The Self-Help Forum   This is one of the best ideas I have seen for some time.   http://www.selfcareforum.org/   It is a gold mine of advice, covering;   Common conditions with excellent fact sheets on Low back pain Eczema Heartburn/indigestion Children’s fever Constipation Headache/migraine Cough (adults) Acne Sprains and strains Sore throat   SelfRead more

I am not sure I entirely have my head around this. I understand apps of course. I certainly use medical apps to calculate certain scores like CHADSVasc2, HASBLED, Wells scoring and the like. But there are now hundreds of new apps. There is an excellent app from Skinvision, which you can use to photograph moles.Read more

Freda’s Fall is an interactive e-learning film focused on the prevention and management of falls. It has been funded by Health Education England North West London, as part of development of a Community Education Provider Network (CEPN) called ALIGN (An Allied Health Professions Innovative Learning Network in Falls Management and developed by the Allied HealthRead more

A Virtual trip to the beach I sounds bizarre does it not? It is something else I found on the fabnhsstuff website and it resonated with an idea I had some years ago. My plan was to develop a programme, that I would take to residential nursing and dementia homes. I would derive the informationRead more

    I have been reading Matthew Syed’ fabulous book Black Box Thinking. I think it should be on the reading list of all decision makers but especially, clinicians, medical politicians and most of all Health Secretaries.   It is a fascinating insight into why errors occur, why they are repeated and how we convinceRead more

How does one make a diagnosis? Diagnosis is a fascinating area. As anyone who searches Google with a symptom finds (most of us at some time or another), a single symptom can represent anything from the trivial to fatal. This in itself has led to a large increase in consultations, of course. So how canRead more