Emergency Medicine

How should a clinician respond when a patient wants to record a consultation? Natalie May’s 2014 UK-focused discussion explores discomfort, trust, consent, information recall and the differences between patient-made and clinician-made recordings, drawing on the professional guidance available at the time.

Lessons from Victoria Brazil’s 2014 St Emlyn’s talk, ‘Talking, Teaching and Technology’. Rick Body describes how preparation, knowing the audience, attention to voice and body language, and ruthless simplification of slides can shape a presentation, alongside reflections from the team’s evening together in Manchester.

Rich Carden uses Star Wars and Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion to explore everyday interactions in emergency medicine. The reflection connects reciprocity, consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity with referrals, teamwork and diagnostic bias, encouraging awareness of psychological influences rather than manipulation of patients or colleagues.

Could a follow-up phone call reduce return visits after a child leaves the emergency department? This 2014 appraisal examines a Canadian study in which callers collected concerns without answering them, questioning allocation methods, outcome measurement and whether reattendance alone can tell us that care was better or worse.

A guide to the Royal College of Radiologists’ 2014 recommendations on imaging injured children. Natalie May explains why paediatric injury patterns and radiation concerns require a distinct approach, then works through the report’s advice by body region and the role of clinical assessment in deciding whether to image.

Iain Beardsell and neurointensive care consultant John Hell discuss diffuse axonal injury in this 2014 podcast. Using a hypothetical injured cyclist, they explore the underlying mechanisms, why initial imaging may reveal little, the evolution of secondary injury and the difficulty of predicting recovery for an individual patient.