General Medicine 5 min read
Breaking Bad News: What to Actually Say
Real sentences for the hardest conversation, why silence is a technique, and the phrases that land badly however kindly meant.
Index
General Medicine
General Medicine 4 min read
Escalating When You Are Worried and Nobody Else Is
The intern is often the first person to notice a patient is deteriorating and the least able to make anyone act. This…
General Medicine 4 min read
Intravenous Fluids: Choosing Them and the Errors That Cause Harm
Fluids are prescribed more casually than any other drug and cause more avoidable harm than most.
General Medicine 4 min read
Nasogastric Tube Placement: The Confirmation Step That Prevents a Never Event
Misplaced feeding tubes kill people. The insertion is straightforward; the confirmation is the part that must never be improvised.
General Medicine 4 min read
Urinary Catheterisation: Consent, Asepsis and Knowing When Not To
The commonest avoidable hospital infection starts here, and the commonest reason is a catheter that was never needed.
General Medicine 4 min read
Recognising Anaphylaxis: The Decision That Cannot Wait
How anaphylaxis actually presents, why the diagnosis is clinical, and the two errors that cause preventable deaths.
General Medicine 4 min read
Consent: What Makes It Valid and Where Interns Get It Wrong
Consent is a process, not a signature. The three requirements, and the situations where an intern should stop and escalate.
General Medicine 4 min read
Taking a History in a Busy OPD Without Missing the Important Thing
How to structure a consultation when you have a fraction of the time you were taught to use, and which shortcuts are…
General Medicine 4 min read
Handover: Using SBAR So Nothing Falls Through the Gap
Most serious incidents involve a handover failure. SBAR exists because unstructured handover reliably loses the same things.
General Medicine 4 min read
Capillary Blood Glucose: Using the Meter Properly and Knowing When Not to Trust It
The commonest bedside test in the hospital, the handful of ways it goes wrong, and the situations where a capillary reading should…