Month: January 2012

The third week in January is always one of the busiest. Everyone is catching up and the flurry of e-mails matches the snow. Despite that we have time to look at space reorganization at the department and are excited by the prospect of  improving the working environment. Those who are likely to move have indicated where their would like to be and it is all looking very achievable.

This is my second vancouver winter and I am still slightly puzzled,as someone who experienced 9 winters in Quebec, how we respond to a slight flurry of snow and a bit of a frost. However I also realize it is not so amusing for many patients and they find it hard to get out to see us in our practices. So how does a patient cancel their appointment. Your MOA might be very busy, assuming that their travel plans were not disrupted, just dealing with twenty five calls to change or cancel an appointment, on top of the already high demand for lab results or other needs. In some countries a lot of patients can get direct access.

This is an example from one site showing the  latest figures for a clinic with  Electronic Access by patients in November 2011.http://gprecordaccess.blogspot.com/

The new year has arrived and has been accompanied by new departmental offspring. Congratulations to Rebecca Goulding, a research coordinator in the department at UBC, who is now sharing her life with Kian Goulding Reynolds, who was born just before midnight on January 2nd, 2012, weighing 3.765kg (8lb 5oz). Mum and baby are both very well and happy!

Cathy Ellis, one of our lead faculty in midwifery, received news that she has been promoted to Senior Instructor. Many congratulations.

Chocolate cake was well employed to welcome Shelagh Levangie who has been appointed Departmental Director of Administration. Many congratulations. At that impromptu meeting there was discussion, prompted by the cake, about how we become more physically active as a department. Look out for notices about walks and other activities as this conversation develops.

Finally if you missed Richard Lehman’s blog in the BMJ this week, you missed his quotation of John Yudkin’s “Ten Commandments of the New Therapeutics”, which should be engraved in every prescriber’s brain.

1. Thou shalt treat according to level of risk rather than level of risk factor
2. Thou shalt exercise caution when adding drugs to existing polypharmacy
3. Thou shalt consider benefits of drugs as proven only by hard endpoint studies
4. Thou shalt not bow down to surrogate endpoints, for these are but graven images
5. Thou shalt not worship Treatment Targets, for these are but the creations of Committees
6. Thou shalt apply a pinch of salt to Relative Risk Reductions, regardless of P values, for the population of their provenance may bear little relationship to thy daily clientele
7. Thou shalt honor the Numbers Needed to Treat, for therein rest the clues to patient-relevant information and to treatment costs.
8. Thou shalt not see detailmen, nor covet an Educational Symposium in a luxury setting
9. Thou shalt share decisions on treatment options with the patient in the light of estimates of the individual’s likely risks and benefits.
10. Honor the elderly patient, for although this is where the greatest levels of risk reside, so do the greatest hazards of many treatments. http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2012/01/03/richard-lehmans-journal-review-3-january-2012/

Happy New Year to all

Martin