Medcast news and blog
Is it time to put a CAP on the number of PSA screening tests we are doing?
'All screening programmes do harm; some do good as well, and, of these, some do more good than harm at reasonable cost’.
READ ON
I was called in by my Head of Learning and Teaching to discuss my ‘workload’ recently. My first thought was “oh no, they will add more to my workload as they’ve discovered that I’ve been working under my contracted hours”.
Imagine you are seeing Sue with major depression. You have referred her for talking therapy, tried a SSRI then an SNRI and she is still no better. What next? Is it worth adding in mirtazapine?
Although evidence-based medicine has undoubtedly been a force for good and has transformed clinical practice for the better, it has also been responsible for a subtle change in power dynamics when it comes to clinical policymaking.
A friend of mine came to have coffee with me recently. She was very anxious and upset about her husband’s upcoming prostatectomy. He had developed a fairly aggressive cancer that needed immediate action.
There’s been increasing attention on the little known organism Mycoplasma genitalium as an emerging cause of sexually transmitted conditions in women and men.
Our professional identities play out in tangible ways such as our language, clothes and everyday behaviour. Our identity is the external representation of our inner feelings, beliefs, experiences and values. We all have a number of identities which reflect our day to day experiences and the environments within which we operate.
So, we’ve heard about all this recent “exciting” cardiovascular outcome data in type 2 diabetes, but is there a real tangible benefit to our own patients outside of a clinical trial setting? How should we be incorporating it into our own clinical practice?
Have you ever spoken to someone and thought “OMG! I would be depressed too if I were in their shoes”? Of course you have! But have you ever met someone who despite all the bad luck and set backs has remained optimistic and been able to make the best out of what would be for others an impossible and unbearable situation?
Two of the five available PPIs rank in the top five medicines by prescription volume in the latest statistics from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) for prescriptions in 2016–17 and four of the five available PPIs are among the top 30 medicines.