Clinical medicine (London, England)
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Neurological illnesses are a common cause of hospital admissions, yet most patients are not primarily managed by neurologists. Acute neurology service provision varies across the UK. This study aimed to establish the number of neurological admissions during a 2-week period in a district general hospital, as well as the proportion of those patients who were seen by the hyperacute neurology team. ⋯ It was established that there was a total of 2,242 admissions during the study period and, of those, 491 (22%) had neurological codes. Analysis of the 491 hospital electronic records revealed that 229 (10%) were truly neurologically relevant and, of those, 14% of patients received an opinion from the neurology team. Therefore, it can be concluded that only a small proportion of acute neurology is currently being seen by neurologists.
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Providing comprehensive tobacco addiction treatment to smokers admitted to acute care settings represents an opportunity to realise major health resource savings and population health improvements. ⋯ National implementation of this cost-effective programme would be likely to generate substantial benefits to public health.
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Although the medical humanities are increasingly well established in terms of scholarly research and undergraduate medical education, a notable deficit has been its low profile in postgraduate training and continuing professional development (CPD). We undertook to develop a programme in the medical humanities to address the deficit in CPD and specialist training, working with colleagues in a range of colleges and disciplines in Ireland. ⋯ Postgraduate colleges of medicine can play an important role in developing medical humanities strands in their postgraduate training and CPD activities. Given the relative novelty of developing postgraduate training and CPD in medical humanities, it may be worthwhile developing an intercollegiate platform among the wider range of medical colleges in the British Isles to jointly develop the most effective mechanisms to further propagate medical humanities and leverage the expertise of a larger pool of faculty in medical humanities.