Some time ago we put together a grant proposal involving multimedia and healthcare. Our goal was to shop the proposal around to private foundations for funding. We planned to test the concept that information - or intellectual property - assets were being created everyday in the hospital environment. These assets, if captured and made persistent, could then be distributed and made available in the region for multiple uses - education, marketing, etc.

The bottom line is that the value of these intellectual property assets is currently being lost to the institution because there is no mechanism in place to capture, package and distribute this intellectual property.

Newsflash! The Internet changed all that long ago … The REAL BIG news for health care organizations is that the penetration of broadband combined with the ease and low cost of creating video-based content has made it possible for every hospital to have its own “on-demand” TV station. Anyway, you get the idea. Here’s the proposal for anyone wishing to pursue a similar project in your institution.

Randale

Dr. Shin Azegami MBBS (London)
SHO in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Hemel Hempstead General Hospital
West Hertfordshire NHS Trust, UK

Fractures of the distal radius account for an estimated 20% of fractures seen in the Accident and Emergency department in the UK. These injuries are common in the elderly population with osteoporosis, typically caused by a fall on outstretched hand. Most of these fractures are managed by the junior doctors in the department by closed reduction and plaster immobilisation under adequate analgesia and haematoma block.

Having spent 6 months as a Senior House Officer in the Accident and Emergency Department, I found that Junior Doctors find evaluating the post reduction films a bit of a challenge (i.e. to determine whether the reduction achieved is successful or unsuccessful).

This concise article covers the techniques of interpreting wrist radiographs for the junior doctors in the emegency department which will enable them to make an appropriate management plan for patients with wrist fracture. 

The introduction of reforms in higher surgical training in trauma and orthopaedics in the UK has highlighted the problems in assessing trainees with regards to quality and quantity of training.

The logbook has been the traditional record of operative skills training. We have reviewed such training records from trauma and orthopaedic trainees in the pre- Calman training era. A postal questionnaire was sent to twenty trauma and orthopaedic consultants in 1997 who had recently finished pre- Calman orthopaedic higher surgical training.