Early New Years Resolution?

Why PhD Students Should Blog 

There's lots of reasons why researchers and research students should blog about their work, and read other blogs: 

• to learn about other people working in similar fields 
• to gain a habit of reflection
• to get used to writing about your work
• to gain a public profile
• to promote and disseminate your work

For more insights read the prize winning post by Suzi Gage on SciLogs: sifting the evidence.

To help you along the way to your first blog, or to maintaining your blogging habits, maybe the following will help:

• tips for academic blogging
• the virtues of blogging as an academic activity
• I’m an academic and desperately need an online presence, where do I start?
• Is blogging and tweeting about research papers worth it?
   

You might also find these slides useful:

Blogging for researchers from Graduate School Networked Researcher

New Evidence Updates

Lung Cancer and Peritoneal Dialysis are the latest topics to have receive an Evidence Update from NICE.
"Evidence Updates highlight new evidence relating to published accredited guidance. They are based on the scope of the particular guidance they relate to and provide a commentary on a selection of new articles published since the guidance was issued. In particular, Evidence Updates highlight key points from the new evidence and provide a commentary describing its strengths and weaknesses. They also indicate whether the new evidence may have a potential impact on current guidance. Evidence Updates aim to reduce the need for individuals, managers and commissioners to search for new evidence. Evidence Updates do not replace current guidance and do not provide formal practice recommendations. "

See the other topics, arranged by speciality, that have been covered by the Evidence Updates recently here.

Confused about Number Needed to Treat?

All you just need is NNT http://www.thennt.com  - the blog that puts "evidence based medicine under the microscope".

With a clear explanation of what Number Needed to Treat actually means (it's a "a measurement of the impact of a medicine or therapy by estimating the number of patients that need to be treated in order to have an impact on one person" BTW), and regular updates of evidence on different therapeutic interventions, NNT is a great site to help you get to grips with this calculation.



Other useful calculators are available at:

• Medcalc 
• - for Odds Ratio, and Relative Risk:   www.medcalc.org/calc/odds_ratio.php 
• UBC Clinical Significance Calculator 
• - for absolute risk reduction, relative risk reduction, odds ratio and NNT http://spph.ubc.ca/sites/healthcare/files/calc/clinsig.html

• Centre for Evicence Based Medicine 
• for more explanations of NNT, likelihood, and other critical appraisal tools http://www.cebm.net/index.aspx?o=1157

NHS Mandate

http://mandate.dh.gov.uk/

The first Mandate between the Government and the NHS Commissioning Board, setting out the ambitions for the health service for the next two years was published on 13th November.

The NHS Mandate is structured around five key areas where the Government expects the NHS Commissioning Board to make improvements:

• preventing people from dying prematurely
• enhancing quality of life for people with long-term conditions
• helping people to recover from episodes of ill health or following injury
• ensuring that people have a positive experience of care
• treating and caring for people in a safe environment and protecting them from avoidable harm.

Through the Mandate, the NHS will be measured, for the first time, by how well it achieves the things that really matter to people.
The key objectives contained within the Mandate include:

• improving standards of care and not just treatment, especially for the elderly
• better diagnosis, treatment and care for people with dementia
• better care for women during pregnancy, including a named midwife responsible for ensuring personalised, one-to-one care throughout pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period
• every patient will be able to give feedback on the quality of their care through the Friends and Family Test starting from next April – so patients will be able to tell which wards, A&E departments, maternity units and hospitals are providing the best care
• by 2015 everyone will be able to book their GP appointments online, order a repeat prescription online and talk to their GP online
• putting mental health on an equal footing with physical health – this means everyone who needs mental health services having timely access to the best available treatment
• preventing premature deaths from the biggest killers
• by 2015, everyone should be able to find out how well their local NHS is providing the care they need, with the publication of the results it achieves for all major services.

http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/2012/11/nhs-mandate/

• The Mandate: A mandate from the Government to the NHS Commissioning Board: April 2013 to March 2015
• The Government’s response to the consultation on the draft mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board
• Equality Analysis
• Reference document for policy impact assessments
• Financial Directions to the NHS Commissioning Board

Watch Jeremy Hunt present the Mandate to Parliament:

 Reaction:

• BBC News - Is the NHS Mandate really that radical?  and NHS Mandate 'a historic moment'
• Nursing Times 
• NHS Commissioning Board 
• BMA  = British Medical Association 
• RCN - Royal College of Nursing
• Guardian -Will the government's mandate put patients at the heart of the NHS?
• Telegraph - Ministers hail first 'contract' with NHS

New online anatomy resource - Instant Anatomy

Struggling to tell where the internal jugular stops and the subclavian begins? Or want a quick podcast of the Myotomes and Dermatomes in the Upper Limb?

Then Instant Anatomy could be the answer.

As well as including clear diagrams, and complementary podcasts, there are MCQs and apps for your smart phone.

Use your RAVEN login to access when you're away from a Cambridge University computer.

https://instantanatomy.co.uk/shib

New look TRIP

TRIP has always been a tremendously useful tool for skimming the cream of the evidence - getting guidelines, summaries of evidence, systematic reviews quickly and easily, but it just got better.

http://www.tripdatabase.com 

As well as covering the same high quality evidence as before, the search results also include videos, images, patient information and more.

The website has had a bit of a makeover, and includes new improved Advanced and PICO search options to help you structure your search better.
Remember? PICO? 

• P - Patient/Problem
• I - Intervention
• C - Comparison
• O - Outcome

It can really help tease your question apart, and help you structure your search. More info....

For a quick introduction to TRIP have a look,

And for more help try: http://www.tripdatabase.com/how-to-use-trip or ask in the Medical Library.