Internal medicine journal
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Internal medicine journal · Sep 2021
Alcohol Misuse and Critical Care Admissions in the Northern Territory.
The Northern Territory (NT) has a long history of heavy alcohol consumption with a correspondingly high attributable morbidity and mortality. ⋯ Alcohol misuse is associated with a substantial number of critical care admissions and consumes considerable acute care resources. Further policy directed at harm minimisation and epidemiological work at jurisdictional and national level is necessary.
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Internal medicine journal · Sep 2021
"Concerns and Psychological Wellbeing of Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Tertiary Care Hospital in NSW".
In early 2020, the impending COVID-19 pandemic placed a once-in-a-generation professional and personal challenge on healthcare workers. Publications on direct physical disease abound. The authors wanted to focus on doctors' psychological well-being. ⋯ Both COVID-19 specific concerns and psychological well-being improved greatly in the second survey. Possible explanations are the fall in COVID-19 cases in the district, improvements in PPE supply and supportive measures communicated to doctors during this period.
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Internal medicine journal · Sep 2021
ReviewDemystifying machine learning - a primer for physicians.
Machine learning is a tool for analysing digitised data sets and formulating predictions that can optimise clinical decision-making. It aims to identify complex patterns in large data sets and encode them into models that can then classify new unseen cases or make predictions on new data. Machine learning methods take several forms and individual models can be of many different types. ⋯ The reliability and robustness of any model depends on multiple factors, including the quality and quantity of the data used to develop the models, and the selection of features in the data considered most important to maximising accuracy. In ensuring models are safe, effective and reproducible in routine care, physicians need to have some understanding of how these models are developed and evaluated, and to collaborate with data and computer scientists in their design and validation. This narrative review introduces principles, methods and examples of machine learning in a way that does not require mastery of highly complex statistical and computational concepts.
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Internal medicine journal · Sep 2021
Observational StudyAn Observational Study of the Incidence and Factors Associated with Patient Readmission from Home Based Care Under the Hospital in the Home Program.
Hospital in the Home (HITH) provides home-based care by hospital staff, which reduces inpatient length of stay and promotes a better quality of life. The frequency and precipitants for readmission from HITH back to the acute inpatient service are currently poorly defined. ⋯ Older age and greater comorbidity increased the odds of readmission, but patients from the ED were low risk compared to inpatient referrals.
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Internal medicine journal · Sep 2021
Validation of Australian and Victorian guidelines for colonoscopy triage.
Managing the growing demand for colonoscopies is challenging. ⋯ The Victorian guidelines could reduce the proportion of Category 1 colonoscopies by 10% without reducing conversion or detection rates. This would require improvements in the quality of referrals and ordering faecal occult blood tests in 6% of symptomatic patients.