To solve a problem, a person often asks questions of someone with more expertise. This paper reports on a study of the types of questions asked and how the experts are chosen. In the study, sixty-three first-year medical students responded to clinical scenarios, each describing a patient affected by a toxin and asking questions concerning the identity of the toxin and its characteristics. After...

Contemporary debate on health care resource management is tied to a central moral issue: how to achieve an optimum level of reasonable or appropriate treatment based on the medical condition of each patient. Failure to tackle and resolve this issue in a confident and forthright manner ensures that the present approach to health care decision-making will continue in a state of indecisiveness if ...

BACKGROUND Although frail older people can be more reluctant to become involved in clinical decision making, they do want professionals to take their concerns and wishes into account. Discussing goals can help professionals to achieve this. OBJECTIVE To describe the development of a two-step method for discussing goals with frail older people in primary care and professionals' first experienc...

1. What are this patient’s most striking clinical and laboratory findings? 2. How do you explain this patient’s most striking clinical and laboratory findings? 3. What is this patient’s most likely diagnosis? 4. What are the criteria for making this diagnosis? 5. What are anti-nuclear antibodies (ANAs), how is their presence in a patient’s serum determined, how is the test for ANAs interpreted,...

doi:10.1136/inp.d5353 Although most wound complications are not life-threatening, they can involve prolonged periods of discomfort for the animal and extended veterinary care, as well as increased costs for owners. However, with the appropriate treatment, most wound complications can be managed successfully. This article describes what might be expected of a normal healing wound, and discusses ...

Many studies have demonstrated that prompt appropriate treatment for the critically ill patient improves outcome. Moving patients to the best place for instituting care, however, is not always associated with improved outcome. Recent studies on delivering patients to the best place for treatment as well as further work on the effects of volume are discussed. Finally, a large retrospective cohor...