Stevan Bruijns reflects on working across South African and UK emergency care, challenging assumptions about who teaches and who learns. His account considers the risks of overseas placements, reciprocal learning and practical ways to support colleagues in lower-resource settings, including collaborations that do not require travel.
Is there anything else I need to know? Working in Africa. Read More
This 2018 introduction explains the question behind CRYOSTAT-2: could early cryoprecipitate improve survival after major traumatic bleeding? It outlines the rationale for fibrinogen replacement, the planned randomised trial, eligibility criteria and patient-centred outcomes. This is a preview of the study, before its results became available.
JC: CRYOSTAT-2 with Ross Davenport Read More
Is paracetamol alone enough for pain after minor musculoskeletal injury? This 2017 review examines a randomised non-inferiority trial comparing paracetamol, diclofenac and their combination. It explores pain outcomes, trial design and exclusions, including why the findings cannot simply be extended to fractures or all painful injuries.
JC : Paracetamol, NSAID’s or both in MSK trauma. St.Emlyn’s Read More
How much does delay matter when giving tranexamic acid? This 2017 journal club examines individual patient data from CRASH-2 and WOMAN, exploring the relationship between treatment timing and bleeding deaths, the size of the benefit and the analysis’s limitations.
JC: Does earlier TXA save lives? St.Emlyn’s Read More
How common is venous thromboembolism after major trauma, and who is most at risk? This 2017 systematic-review appraisal finds widely varying estimates and limited evidence, exploring why differences in populations and testing make simple conclusions difficult.
JC: The VTE and Major Trauma. St.Emlyn’s Read More
When a senior emergency physician becomes a patient in his own department, familiarity and deference can complicate care. Andy Volans shares his experience and reflects on careful history-taking, consistent assessment and the risks of giving colleagues a different kind of treatment.
How to manage your boss (the expert patient in the ED). St.Emlyn’s Read More
What can UK registry data tell us about traumatic cardiac arrest? This 2016 appraisal examines survival and injury patterns in TARN, while explaining why observational associations cannot establish which interventions work and why different causes may require different approaches.
JC: UK traumatic cardiac arrest stats. St.Emlyn’s Read More
Should major trauma imaging start with whole-body CT or a selective approach? This 2016 review of REACT-2 examines mortality, imaging speed and radiation exposure, while questioning exclusions, overlapping imaging between groups and whether a trial finding no difference establishes equivalence.
JC: Do we always need a whole body CT in trauma? St.Emlyn’s Read More
