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10th September 2010

Waterford workshop inspires local EBM training course

After the successful CEBM workshop held in Waterford, Ireland last November 2009, the local consultants are now holding a one-day workshop on evidence-based practice.

Details of the local team's workshop can be seen below. We wish them well.

CLINICAL QUERIES SERVICE

Can we help answer your clinical question?

As a follow-up to the very successful HSE/University of Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine workshop in Waterford Regional Hospital last year, the library is initiating a Clinical Queries service available to all HSE South East staff.  The Clinical Queries service is based on the first two steps of the CEBM method:

• EBP Step 1: formulate an answerable question
• EBP Step 2: track down the best evidence

How will it work?

First of all, send us your question by completing a simple online form at the revamped hselibrary.ie website at http://www.hselibrary.ie/southeast/ and click on the CLINICAL QUERIES tab at the top of the screen.  Alternatively, phone (056)7784288 to let us know the details of your question, or email the library at Clinical.Queries@hse.ie. The library will:

• Assign your query to one of the following question types: Intervention; Aetiology/Risk Factors; Diagnosis; Prognosis/Prediction; Frequency/Rate; Phenomena
• Analyse your query into components according to the "PICO" algorithm: Population/Problem; Intervention/Indicator; Comparator/Control; Outcome
• Conduct a detailed subject search on the most relevant primary database: MEDLINE for medical questions; CINAHL for questions related to nursing or allied health; PSYCINFO for questions related to mental health
• Conduct a secondary keyword search of other resources such as Cochrane, UpToDate, MD Consult, guidelines, etc., as appropriate
• Collate a selection of relevant results and return to you with details of the search strategy used and resources searched

To log a search with the service, go to http://www.hselibrary.ie/southeast/ and click on the CLINICAL QUERIES tab at the top of the screen, phone (056)7784288 or email us at Clinical.Queries@hse.ie.  Questions will be allocated to library staff in the order they are received; however, precedence will be given to questions directly related to patient care.

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20th May 2010

New Cochrane review on Oxygen therapy for acute myocardial infarction

Juan Cabello and Amanda Burls Cochrane review on Oxygen therapy for acute myocardial infarction was published this week. Cochrane Review

The review findings of three trials involving 387 patients showed the pooled RR of death was 2.88 (95% CI 0.88 to 9.39) in an intention-to-treat analysis and 3.03 (95% CI 0.93 to 9.83) in patients with confirmed Acute myocardial infarction. While suggestive of harm, the small number of deaths recorded (14) meant that this could be a chance occurrence. Pain was measured by analgesic use. The pooled RR for the use of analgesics was 0.97 (95% CI 0.78 to 1.20).

The conclusion of the authors was there is currently no conclusive evidence from randomised controlled trials to support the routine use of inhaled oxygen in patients with acute AMI. A definitive randomised controlled trial is urgently required given the mismatch between trial evidence suggestive of possible harm from routine oxygen use and recommendations for its use in clinical practice guidelines.

Listen to the Cochrane Podcast which is also available in Spanish.

Press release from the University of Oxford.

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20th May 2010

Centre work on Self-monitoring and self-management of oral anticoagulation appears in the Cochrane Journal Club this week

You can use the powerpoint for a journal club, read the summary or listen to the podcast.

You can also ask the Authors a question about "Self-monitoring and self-management of oral anticoagulation" using this form. We will aim to reply promptly, and reserve the right to post your question alongside an answer on this web site.

Click on the link below to access the Cochrane Journal Club page:
http://www.cochranejournalclub.com/self-monitoring-and-self-management-oral-anticoagulation-clinical/

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29th April 2010

HEALTHCARE UNDER SIEGE: Supporting medical education in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

The Oxford Society for Medicine presents a unique symposium: "HEALTHCARE UNDER SIEGE: Supporting medical education in the Occupied Palestinian Territory". Everyone is welcome and entry is free. Thursday 13th May 2010, 6.00pm - 8.30pm, at Oxford University, St. Catherine's College, Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre.

Question: What do the founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, the first surgeon to perform a heart transplant in the UK and the Editor of the world's leading general medical journal, The Lancet have in common?

Answer:  By volunteering in the occupied Palestinian territories, they all have direct personal experience of the obstacles to health care delivery in one of the most challenging and dangerous environments in the world.

The full panel is comprised of:

Dr Richard Horton - Editor-in-chief of The Lancet. The first President of the World Association of Medical Editors. A member of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Sir Ian Chalmers  - Founder of the Cochrane Collaboration. Co-ordinator of the James Lind initiative. Former director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit in Oxford

Sir Terence English - Retired Professor of Cardiothoracic surgery at Cambridge University. The first man to perform a heart transplant in the UK. Former President of the Royal College of Surgeons

Prof. Colin Green - UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science. Professor of Surgical Science at UCL and UNESCO Chair of Cryobiology with the Ukraine Academy of Science. Former Director of the Northwick Park Institute of Medical Research. He is the founder of IMET2000, with the vision of high-quality global medical education.

Mr Nick Dudley - Consultant Endocrine Surgeon at the Department of Surgery, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and Ex-President of the British Association of Endocrine Surgeons.

Mr Nick Maynard - Consultant Upper Gastro-Intestinal Surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford

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8th April 2010

Anticoagulation in Practice conference 2010

Carl Heneghan will be speaking at the Anticoagulation in Practice conference 2010 on April 22nd and 23rd in Birmingham. The conference is for patients and health care professionals. He will be presenting the latest results on self monitoring of oral anticoagulation due to be published on April the 14th in the Cochrane Library.

More information can be found on the conference website.

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19th February 2010

First DPhil in EBHC Awarded!

Professor Mike Clarke, who worked as one of Steven Edwards' supervisors during his DPhil research, said

"The award of the University's first ever DPhil in Evidence Based Health Care to Steven Edwards is a richly deserved new milestone in his career, and a credit to those who established this novel programme.

"Sarah Wordsworth and I had the pleasure of working as co-supervisors for Steven and we learned a great deal from him. The part-time research programme in evidence based health care was ideally suited to someone like Steven. He was able to combine successfully a full time job with the work for his DPhil, and produced a thesis of high quality, including systematic reviews and an economic model of the effects of antibiotics in the intensive care setting.

"Not only did he prepare the thesis, he also led the work for several journal articles which have placed his research findings into the public domain over the last few years. I expect that Steven and his family will have enjoyed his first research-free Christmas for some time at the end of 2009, following his viva earlier in the month.

"I wish him well in the pursuit of the many research opportunities that will hopefully come his way as a 'post-doc' and am delighted to be part of a DPhil programme which gives students the flexibility to pursue substantial research projects in evidence based health care on a part-time basis."

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29th January 2010

'Evidence-Based Change' course line up announced

In addition to Janet Harris and myself, we have designed the course to bring in teachers whose daily lives involve change management so that the examples are living and real and not just theoretical.  Teachers include: Sir Muir Gray, Chief Knowledge officer of the NHS; David Crowe, of Crowe Associates, a consultant who  advises business and public service clients on change management and other issues; Anne Brice, Associate Director of the UK National Knowledge Service, Professor Tom Quinn a member of the Department of Health Emergency Cardiac Care board who will talk about the national strategy to ensure that the latest evidence about the best care for people who have had a heart attack is implemented in England and Wales, Professor Paul Glasziou who will present a project designed to help implement an evidence based approach and bring about change in primary care in Milton Keynes.

The teaching will be problem based and the numbers of participants will be kept small so that discussion can focus around their own change management problems which each of them has been will be asked to identify in the pre-Oxford week and bring to the sessions.

Find out more

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28th January 2010

Bursary applications now open

Applications are invited for bursary places on the 16th Oxford Workshop on Teaching Evidence-Based Practice, to be held 6th - 10th September 2010 at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, UK.

The bursaries cover the workshop fee only, and applicants will need to find funding for their travel and accommodation.

The workshop is aimed at clinicians and other health care professionals, including those involved in mental health, who already have some knowledge of critical appraisal and experience in the practice of evidence-based health care and who want to explore issues around teaching evidence-based medicine.

There will be two main themes running throughout the workshop:

Teaching will be addressed through the exploration of different educational models for teaching evidence-based practice and identification and discussion of issues of pedagogy, curriculum design development and maintenance. The aim will be to promote the teaching evidence-based health care at your home institution.

Personal Development will be addressed by offering guidance and help in extending and advancing participants' existing critical and teaching skills.

Application forms and further details of this workshop can be downloaded from our Workshop online Training & Education page.

All bursary applications should be accompanied by a covering letter detailing their current involvement in EBM and outlining what they would do with the knowledge gained on the course. A CV should also accompany the application.

All bursary applications will be considered at the end of March 2010, the final date for acceptance of bursary applications will be 31st March 2010.

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12th January 2010

The Health Impact Fund: incentives for improving access to medicines

Medicines which treat and prevent disease are not available and accessible in many areas of the world, whether they are long-established drugs or newly developed compounds. Part of the problem has been that the current system of patents and intellectual property rights carries no incentives for development of drugs for diseases in low-income countries, where most of the global disease burden lies. The CEBM's Ami Banerjee is a medical advisor to the Health Impact Fund (HIF), a novel idea first proposed by Thomas Pogge and Aidan Hollis. In the Lancet this week, they describe their proposal for a new global patent system for development of medicines, particularly for diseases in low-income countries.

http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61296-4/fulltext

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