COVID-19 has resulted in many conflicting messages. One area of extreme importance is the health and safety of healthcare workers. I have repeatedly heard that our infection control measures are perfect, and cannot be questioned, while simultaneously seeing numerous colleagues contract the virus. When it comes to the safety of […]
ebm reviews Rants & Ramblings
49 posts
Either a patient needs antibiotics or they don’t. If a patient needs antibiotics, a delayed prescription is harmful. If a patient doesn’t need antibiotics, a delayed prescription is harmful. Thus, delayed antibiotics are dumb.
Stop saying “first, do no harm”. Seriously, just stop. A moment’s reflection will reveal how inane and unhelpful the phrase is. Might doctors forget and start harming their patients if we don’t regularly remind them not to? However, more than inane, “first, do no harm” paints an unrealistic picture of […]
Dr Anand Senthi (@drsenthi) posted a great talk about what he calls “EBM 2.0” entitled “Evidence Based Fraud & the End of Statistical Significance”. I think readers of this blog will find the talk really interesting, and potentially enlightening.
The pressure cooker of COVID-19 has brought out examples of both the best and the worst in medicine. We need to spend more time focusing on the best – the incredible creativity, innovation, teamwork, compassion, and dedication demonstrated throughout this crisis. However, we also need to consider the lessons that […]
Sucrose is not a pain medication. That rant already exists on this blog. It was also the subject of my talk at the final SMACC conference, which is now online. Another blog post is probably unnecessary, but neither resource included the references from my literature review, so for those who […]
There are two massive problems with science publication, and maybe only one way to fix them. Any long time reader of this blog will have encountered me saying something like “this study should never have been published.” (See, for example, Andexanet Alfa: More garbage science in the New England Journal […]
Last year, I started keeping track of the books I was reading, mostly to help prevent me from bringing a handful of books on vacation only to find out that I have already read them all. Reading back through the list was a nice “year in review” exercise for me. […]