Informing our decisions (Editorial) |
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One of the most important papers we are likely to read this year was published in
January. It concerned the completeness of reporting of adverse events, and tells
us that reporting is poor. Anyone skilled at the art of reading papers probably
knew this already, but, together with other work in adverse event reporting, it
sets us down a new road. The destination is better information on the benefit and
harm from treatment to enable professionals and their patients to make truly
informed judgements. We comment
here
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Informing our decisions
Both Bandolier and ImpAct rely on good feedback from readers to inform on the topics we write about. Sometimes that comes from meeting readers at meetings, and getting information directly from them. Sometimes they volunteer it by email, fax or letter. For instance, this month Bandolier has an update on glucosamine triggered by many requests.
But from time to time it is necessary to be more formal. So Bandolier has a simple form that can be downloaded (pdf) , then printed, faxed or posted or emailed to us. We want to know what topics you would like to see covered (and why if there's enough space). We want to know what parts of the Internet site you would like to see developed, either those we have or those we do not have. We want to know about people in the NHS who have made real progress in improving the service that we could write about in ImpAct , based on being measureable, affordable and transferable. And finally there's a free text box for the things we haven't thought about.
Infrequently asked questions
In ImpAct comes some interesting stuff from the TRIP database in Gwent, where GPs can ask infrequently asked questions. Some of these infrequently asked questions were asked surprisingly frequently (like the efficacy of paracetamol and opioid combinations). Search the Bandolier website and others to find an answer. That's the goal of reader surveys - to answer questions before you ask.
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