BMJ talk medicine

A recent case against a GP in England has worried the profession - does the fact that a patient, born with a neural tube defect, successfully sued their mother's GP open up the floodgates for litigation? How will that effect the way that you practice?

In this episode we're joined by Claire Dyer, The BMJ's legal correspondent, who explains how that case unfolded.

We also have a clinical update on childhood constipation, and the authors of a recent article in The BMJ give their tips on getting kids to drink movicol.

Show jumper wins case against mother’s GP for “wrongful conception” that resulted in her disability

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2999

Childhood constipation

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-065046

In this episode of the IJGC podcast, Editor-in-Chief Dr. Pedro Ramirez, is joined by Prof. Philipp Harter to discuss The DESKTOP III Trial. Prof. Harter is the director of the Department of Gynecology & Gynecologic Oncology at Kliniken Essen-Mitte in Essen, Germany, and the chair of the AGO Study Group.

Highlights:

-Role of surgery for relapsed ovarian cancer is under debate

-DESKTOP III has shown a significant benefit regarding PFS and OS by secondary cytoreduction

-The data, interpretation and clinical consequences are discussed".

In the previous episodes of Doctor Informed, we've heard why it's so important to talk about patient safety concerns, and some of the mechanisms that allow hospital staff to raise them, but knowing why and how doesn't always make it easier to speak out.

In this episode we're exploring the concept of a voiceable concern – identifying what counts as a concern, and what counts as an occasion for voice by an individual, is not a straightforward matter of applying objective criteria- for example how do you tell if you're witnessing poor practice, or just something that lies outside your area of understanding? Or how do you know if the common practice in this particular ward is actually an outlier when looking at other hospitals?

Our guests this week;

Mary Dixon-Woods is director of THIS Institute, and a Health Foundation Professor of Healthcare Improvement Studies in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. Her work is concerned with generating a high quality evidence-base to support the organisation, quality and safety of care delivered to patients.

Zoe Fritz is a consultant in acute medicine at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, she is also a Wellcome Fellow in society and ethics at THIS Institute, investigating how we communicate and record uncertainty around diagnosis.

Reading:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34978470/

www.bmj.com/podcasts/doctorinformed/

https://www.thisinstitute.cam.ac.uk/podcast/

Publications, presentations, citations - these are trophies that you can flash proudly on your CV. However, what medical students may underestimate, is the long hours required reading papers, processing data and revising manuscripts. While academic medicine can be rewarding and intellectually stimulating, it is not the only way to become a successful clinician, and it definitely isn’t the be-all and end-all.

Topics:

•What do editors look for in manuscripts?

•The importance of having a mentor in academia

•Navigating author guidelines

•Pre-print platforms

•How does one get into publishing?

•How do I get better at writing?

•What do researchers look for when medical students reach out to them?

•Predatory journals

Expert guest:

Dr Joseph Ross (@jsross119 on Twitter) is a Professor of Medicine (General Medicine) and of Public Health (Health Policy and Management) at the Yale School of Medicine. He is also the co-founder of the preprint service for medicine and health sciences - medRxiv.

Check out Edward Christopher’s piece on predatory journals: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2019/10/08/edward-christopher-how-can-medical-students-avoid-predatory-journals/

Check us out on social media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BMJStudent

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bmj_student/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BMJStudent/

This podcast is produced and edited by Dom Byrne and Duncan Jarvies.

J. Rick Castañeda is a writer, director and producer (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1479268/?ref_=tt_ov_dr). His works have been around the world to festivals in London, Canada, Japan, and Romania, as well as festivals in the US such as SXSW. He made over 30 short films, earning recognition from YouTube, Crackle, and Funny or Die.

Rick uses humour to explore stress, anxiety and disenfranchisement in the office space. In this podcast, Rick reflects on his childhood and time spent as an office worker, and how these experiences inspired his creative writing and film career. He stresses the importance of portraying human beings from different backgrounds in his films to encourage a dialogue between cultures.

Related links:

https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2022/01/21/loneliness-friendship-and-love-in-the-office-space

https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2019/07/30/christina-lee-mindlessness-book-review/

https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2016/12/14/film-review-dear-zindagi/

https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2016/07/13/film-review-notes-on-blindness/

In this podcast with Dr James Hull and Dr Maarit Valtonen, we take a deep dive into a topic that affects athletes around the globe.

We cover:

• The extent of the issue

• A recommended approach to evaluating athletes

• The value of point-of-case testing

• Return to sport

For some further resources, the below links may well be useful

Papers:

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/11/17/bjsports-2021-104719

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/53/17/1093

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/20/1144

Editor-in-Chief of the Archives of Disease in Childhood, Dr Nick Brown, and Senior Editor, Dr Rachel Agbeko, bring you the Atoms - the highlights of the February 2022 issue.

Read it on the Archives of Disease in Childhood website:

https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/2/i

When we ask our PICO questions, how often do we think about what we’re not asking … and when should we revise them? That’s the core of this little piece which encourages us to think about thinking a bit - https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/2/193.2.

Far less profound, and far more helpful, is the question of if twins (and triplets and higher orders) are at greater risk of RSV just by being doublets (which really should be what we call them) - https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/2/193.1. And almost as useful is if you can stop a child with annoying sniffles having annoying sniffles when all else fails by splashing them with monteleukast - https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/2/197.

So for now, kick back in the snow, tell us what you think, and submit your own following the instructions on the website and you too could be hearing all about yourself spoken by Archi.

In this episode of the Heart podcast, Digital Media Editor, Dr James Rudd, is joined by Dr Ramesh Nadarajah from the University of Leeds. They discuss a systematic review and meta-analysis of AF prediction methods in primary care.

If you enjoy the show, please subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your phone and computer. Also, please consider leaving us a review at https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/heart-podcast/id445358212?mt=2

Link to published paper: https://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2021/10/03/heartjnl-2021-320036

In this episode of the IJGC podcast, Editor-in-Chief Dr. Pedro Ramirez, is joined by Dr. Gloria Salvo and Dr. Rene Pareja to discuss IRTA: Open vs MIS Radical Trachelectomy. Dr. Salvo was trained as a gynecologist in Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina and works as a Clinical Reviewer/Data Abstractor of the Neuroendocrine Cervical Tumor Registry (NeCTuR) at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She has published several articles in cervical cancer including sentinel lymph node mapping and fertility-sparing surgery, neuroendocrine cervical carcinomas, and is the first author of the IRTA Study.

Highlights

-In this multicenter retrospective study, we found no difference in the 4.5-year DFS rates between open radical trachelectomy and minimally invasive radical trachelectomy in patients with tumors up to 2 cm, even after adjusting for potential confounding variables because of unbalanced groups.

-There was no difference in the OS rates or recurrence rates between the open surgery and MIS groups.

-Risk factors for relapse were more common in the open surgery group, but oncologic outcomes were similar for the open and minimally invasive approaches.