How to set up an audit
Follow six steps to create a clinical audit that will make a difference. An audit improves the quality of patient care by looking at current practice and modifying it where necessary.1 If you notice a problem on the wards, therefore, and you believe that the current clinical practice is not the best practice, it could be an opportunity for you to set up your own audit. It is important to distinguish the difference between audit and research because these two terms should not be used interchangeably. …
A man with radiating loin pain
A 30 year old man presented to the emergency department with severe loin pain. He felt it throughout the right side of his abdomen radiating to the groin, and it was associated …
Suicide among medical students
I suppose the symptoms had been there for years—stinging self criticism, a feeling of being unworthy of my fellows’ company, and a destructive relationship with booze, to name a …
On call for the royal household
President of the Royal College of Physicians and former physician to the queen. Richard Thompson studied Natural Sciences and medicine at Oxford University. After a number of junior posts in London, he specialised in gastroenterology, practising until his retirement …
Junior doctors: your life in their hands
Can broadcasting your working day on television make you a better doctor?. The BBC Three programme, Junior Doctors: Your Life in Their Hands, was back on our television screens again recently for a second series, after the success of the first series last year. …
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