Postgraduate medical journal
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Quality assurance concerns about social media platforms used for education have arisen within the medical education community. As more trainees and clinicians use resources such as blogs and podcasts for learning, we aimed to identify quality indicators for these resources. A previous study identified 151 potentially relevant quality indicators for these social media resources. ⋯ The quality indicators that were identified may serve as a foundation for further research on quality indicators of social media-based medical education resources and prompt discussion of their legitimacy as a form of educational scholarship.
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Ninety years ago, the first issue of the Postgraduate Medical Journal published a review of an article written by Mr Robert Lindsay-Rea, a consultant ophthalmic surgeon in the Western Ophthalmic Hospital and an oculist in the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, entitled "A preliminary report on the treatment of keratitis". Today, microbial keratitis remains an important cause of avoidable visual impairment in the world. ⋯ Significant advances have also been made in our understanding and management of this important disorder. This article highlights some of these changes and discusses the current management and research.
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To determine the barriers to seeking help from healthcare services reported by medical students at an Indian medical school, and to compare the barriers for using physical health services with those for using mental health services. ⋯ Barriers to seeking healthcare services differ for mental and physical health issues. Many system based barriers such as stigma, confidentiality issues and poor awareness of service location were reported by students. Institutional programmes should use this information for improving the usage, satisfaction and effectiveness of healthcare delivery systems for medical students.
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Cigarette smoking is a well-established risk factor for the development of coronary heart disease. However, the relationship between smoking and acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is less well described. ⋯ Cigarette smoking is associated with a fivefold increased risk of STEMI. Smoking cessation reduced this risk to a level similar to never-smokers.
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Review
Republished: Respiratory microbiota: addressing clinical questions, informing clinical practice.
Over the last decade, technological advances have revolutionised efforts to understand the role played by microbes in airways disease. With the application of ever more sophisticated techniques, the literature has become increasingly inaccessible to the non-specialist reader, potentially hampering the translation of these gains into improvements in patient care. In this article, we set out the key principles underpinning microbiota research in respiratory contexts and provide practical guidance on how best such studies can be designed, executed and interpreted. We examine how an understanding of the respiratory microbiota both challenges fundamental assumptions and provides novel clinical insights into lung disease, and we set out a number of important targets for ongoing research.