This post is based on a talk Dani presented at the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine conference in November 2019. The talk wouldn’t have been possible without the extraordinary help and inspiration from Mike Farqhuar from the Evelina London Children’s Hospital and Mike Healy from the Linn Dara CAMHS Unit.
Whilst breastfeeding confers myriad benefits for infants and their mothers, there are many reasons why some infants will require formula, at least at some point in their first 12 months of life. Having a basic understanding of the different products available and the way formula should be prepared and administered is important for all doctors and nurses working with young children. The variety of formulas, bottles and teats available, as well as the complexities of preparation, administration, and storage, confuses the best of us, so here’s my attempt to make it a little clearer.
“If breastfeeding did not already exist, someone who invented it today would deserve a dual Nobel Prize in medicine and economics… Breastfeeding is a child’s first inoculation against death, disease, and poverty, but also their most enduring investment in physical, cognitive, and social capacity.”
This post accompanies the talk I gave at the adolescent health session of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Annual Scientific Meeting in Hobart.
One of the challenges of paediatrics is how to distill a life of experience down to something more tangible. When you are asked “How did you know s/he was sick?” you need to be able to give a better answer than “I just know“. In this session from DFTB19 we challenged three clinicians to explain just why they think the way they do.
Kerry Woolfall is a social scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool. This talk, our second from the PERUKI track, she talks about doing research without prior parent and patient consent. Following legislative changes in 2008 it is now possible (in the UK at least) to enter a child into a trial of potentially life-saving treatment then seek consent after the fact. But how would parents react to this? How would clinicians? What would happen if a child died during the trial, as may understandably occur if we are looking at potentially life-saving interventions?
This talk is not just about a researchers point of view but also details Kerry’s experience from the other side of the clipboard as a NICU parent.
The research embodies a core principle of engagement.
You can read some of the research here.
Woolfall K, Young B, Frith L, Appleton R, Iyer A, Messahel S, Hickey H, Gamble C. Doing challenging research studies in a patient-centred way: a qualitative study to inform a randomised controlled trial in the paediatric emergency care setting. BMJ open. 2014 May 1;4(5):e005045.
Woolfall K, Frith L, Gamble C, Gilbert R, Mok Q, Young B. How parents and practitioners experience research without prior consent (deferred consent) for emergency research involving children with life threatening conditions: a mixed method study. BMJ open. 2015 Sep 1;5(9):e008522.
You can follow Kerry on Twitter here.
#DoodleMed below by @char_durand
This talk was recorded live at DFTB19 in London, England. With the theme of “The Journey” we wanted to consider the journeys our patients and their families go on, both metaphorical and literal. DFTB20 will be held in Brisbane, Australia.
If you want our podcasts delivered straight to your listening device then subscribe to our iTunes feed or check out the RSS feed. If you are more a fan of the visual medium then subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please embrace the spirit of FOAMed and spread the word.
Parents bring their 5 day old baby in to Paeds ED. He has had sticky eyes since birth and they don’t seem to be getting better. The baby seems otherwise well. What should you advise?
Shweta Gidwani graduated from Seth G.S. Medical College, Mumbai, India in 2002. S. She has been involved in the development of emergency care service delivery and training programs in India for several years and was invited to join the International Emergency Medicine section at George Washington University as Adjunct Asst Professor in 2013 where she works on the India programs.
This talk, the opening talk proper after Mary set the scene, is a stark reminder of just how the world really works.
©Ian Summers
This talk was recorded live at DFTB19 in London, England. With the theme of “The Journey” we wanted to consider the journeys our patients and their families go on, both metaphorical and literal. DFTB20 will be held in Brisbane, Australia.
If you want our podcasts delivered straight to your listening device then subscribe to our iTunes feed or check out the RSS feed. If you are more a fan of the visual medium then subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please embrace the spirit of FOAMed and spread the word.
You may recall the headlines surrounding the case of Baby P. Back in 2007 a 17 month old boy died as a result of injuries suffered over months of abuse. During that ordeal he had been seen by the London Borough of Haringey Children’s services and multiple concerns were raised. But nothing happened. Not until it was too late. Eight years earlier the same council had failed to intervene possibly leading to the death of eight year old Victoria Climbie.
Dr Amanda Gwee is a clinician-scientist fellow in the MCRI Infectious Diseases and Microbiology group. Her area of research interest revolves around the appropriate dosing of antibiotics.
Associate Professor Matt Sabin is the Chief Medical Officer of the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. It was not in this role that we asked him to speak but rather in his clinical role as a paediatric endocrinologist running the largest tertiary hospital obesity service in Australia.
A better discharge summary
Beckie Singer. A better discharge summary, Don't Forget the Bubbles, 2020. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.31440/DFTB.21995
Discharge summaries, often considered the bane of every junior doctor and ED physician’s existence. But what if we took a step back and considered these as a clinical handover to primary care – similar in nature to the clinical handover that occurs in the transfer of care documents that you would send with a patient you are transferring to another hospital? They suddenly take on a whole other level of importance. Studies from the ‘adult medicine world‘ have shown that roughly 20% of patients experience an adverse event during the hospital-to-home transition, many of which could be mitigated by good handover between the hospital and the primary care provider.