JellyBean 053 with Steve Mathieu

I have a critical information overload and a finite amount of brain space. It feels like everything that goes in these days must force something else out. It is like a Grey Matter Flavoured Mr Whippy ice cream curling its way into a wafer cone. Mmmmmm.

Lets hope I don’t accidentally squirt out some really important stored information like Hutchinson’s Clinical Method, the Constitution of the United States of America or the birth of my daughter.

Call it the The Monro-Kellie-Lynch Doctrine.

If there’s only so much space I had better only squish good stuff in there. I need help with this. I asked @stevemathieu75 …

There is a lot of knowledge out there. What’s The Bottom Line?

Alright. You’ve decided to specialise in some fantastically sexy area of medicine/nursing/paramedicine. You need to learn the craft. You need to get through each night shift. You need to stay alive. You need to maintain your relationship with your man/woman/dog/cat/mother/father/children……

You also need to know about a million research papers that were published over the last 30 years. The people you are working alongside have been absorbing this knowledge for years. They may even have been involved in the studies. Worse still the woman that is examining you for your Fellowship/Board may have written that crazy bit of evidence based medicine. Not everyone gets to do a Masters of Public Health or an Epidemiology/Biostats qualification. So; where do you start?

What does this study mean? Is there some arcane biostats faux pas that makes this paper useful only for personal hygiene? What is the “Bottom Line”? The good news is that there often is a bottom line and a bunch of your peers (some pretty cool peers like Steve Mathieu, Celia Bradford, Duncan Chambler and Charlotte Summers) have set up the snappily named www.thebottomline.org.uk

(It does exactly what it says on the tin.)

Steve Mathieu is a very likeable chap. We had a good giggle and the conversation slipped sideways (as usual) into other FOAMed issues, why podcasting is a funny beast, theres a significant bit of bro-love for Scott Weingart and we deal with our own insecurities about not being that pretty. That said he keeps turning up in the LITFL Review so he must be doing something right.

A big shout out to a #FOAMed hero of mine Mark Crislip the man that has now produced over 900 Gobbets’o’pus! Look out for Dr Crislip, and any gobbets associated with him, on iTunes and many other places on the “interweb”. (Prepare thyself for weirdness.)

Further Reading

• The Bottom Line
• Wessex ICS
• emcrit
• and The Prince of Pus; Mark Crislip at Edgy Doc

(Warning; This podcast is not recommended for any personal hygiene uses related to bottoms. The Constitution of the United States of America is not recommended for any similar personal hygiene uses even if you have been elected President of said country.)