Author: Editor

What a week it’s been here in Oxford for an evidence nerd like me! First, two days of brilliant presentations, stimulating debate and some tasty and reassuringly-managable food that could be eaten standing up, without fear of finding I’d been talking to Ben Goldacre with a piece of coleslaw draped over my conference badge (I suspect he’d have been merciless). That was our Cochrane UK and Ireland 21st Anniversary Symposium, in which both ‘Cochranites’ and those not involved in the Collaboration (gasp!) gathered to discuss the challenges of the changing healthcare landscape and particularly what Cochrane might do to meet them. Hard on its heels and before we’d had time to set about changing the world, came another fabulous two day evidence-fest, Evidence Live, aimed at ‘everyone with an interest in evidence-based healthcare’. Thanks to social media, large numbers of those people were able to join in as virtual participants…

Funny how the blogosphere echoes some of the thoughts that have been incubating in my own mind… A few posts have caught my eye recently. One that I have been meaning to comment on was Dr. Vartabedian’s piece “Do You Initiate or Respond?” which characterizes physicians, in general, as trained responders rather than initiators [give it a look, it’s a quick read].

I had myself been concurrently pondering the same idea (though classifying it as reactive versus proactive in my own mind, but we mean the same thing). As Dr. V points out, doctors are reflexive and very much good at it.  We are nimble thinkers on our feet when faced with problems, calculating a large number of variables to try solve problems in -let’s face it- a very short period of time, all the while doing our best to navigate through a myriad of emotions along the way. The importance of this…