So, Inside Health is back on the air and as usual has lots to discuss and think about! I'm up to date with the episodes and have particularly appreciated the article on dry mouth and current cancer treatments.
I'm proud to announce I finished Bad Pharma last week, within the 3 weeks of the library book loan too! I talked about it to a friend and colleague and she asked if reading it had changed my prescribing. I think that is a really hard question to answer quickly!
The book is pretty forthright about my responsibility as a doctor regarding prescribing and Ben Goldacre really knows his stuff. He also makes good points about getting the right information to GPs to be able to make a good decision when prescribing.
He highlights the arbitrary nature of some of our decisions and how easy it would be to fix indiscrepancies by entering all patients into trials as a matter of course as opposed to the current state of affairs.
So, how will it change my prescribing? I would like to think I prescribe mainly tried and tested generics based on current best evidence already. I hope it will make me more enquiring about prescribing decisions from secondary care. I hope I will share the vagarities of some decisions with my patients where good evidence isn't available more openly.
The book is very critical of medical journals and editorial decisions and champions the Cochrane Collaboration throughout the book. I guess the CC wouldn't be my first port of call for day to day decisions, but maybe I should look at it more- i shall subscribe to their email alerts and have a listen to the podcasts they do.
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