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How to Treat .
EARN CPD OR PDP POINTS
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Complete How to Treat quizzes via ausdoc . com . au / how-to-treat
The trick of How to Treat
Professor Craig McBride Senior Staff Specialist Paediatric Surgeon at Children ’ s Health Queensland .
I HAVE enjoyed writing How to Treats over the years . It forces me to sit down and have a hard look at my specialty , summarising what is really important and providing robust , usable algorithms for investigation and treatment .
The work also forces me to identify where the evidence base ends and where expert opinion is all we have to go on — that sometimes subtle shift from evidence-based surgery to eminence-based surgery .
Most importantly , however , writing for the How to Treat ( HTT ) series extends my reach beyond the walls of the hospital . I have only a vague idea of the difficulties of general practice as a specialty , having decided some time ago that its complex mix of demands was probably beyond me .
As a surgeon , I am expected to know a lot about only a small facet of medicine ; as GPs , you are expected to know a lot about everything .
I do not know how you do it , but it is the need to meet that challenge that hopefully explains why HTT has established itself as an invaluable source of clinical information for so many GPs over the years .
A pivotal time
The year Australian Doctor was first published was also the year , coincidentally , that a friend ’ s ophthalmologist father suggested to me one evening that I might like to consider medical school after finishing high school .
It is illuminating to reflect on how your life can pivot on a single conversation .
While 40 years is a long time , and the memory dims somewhat , it allows space to create a good origin story .
In my origin story , I was pondering medical school anyway , but I distinctly remember that evening at Dr John and Dianne McKinnon ’ s house as a turning point .
A decade on , and I was in London , my final year as a medical student , and I had definitely decided I was not going to be a surgeon . AIDS was still taking its terrible human toll .
Fighting my fate
As evidence of my commitment to avoid my destined future career at all costs , I was on my elective at St Bartholomew ’ s Hospital , working in the HIV / AIDS unit there with the immunology team .
Times change . Another decade , and I was entering my first year of dedicated paediatric surgical training . What had happened ? I had become interested in urology and had chosen paediatric surgery because it seemed to involve
a lot of urology that would improve my general urological skill set .
With the guidance of urologists , paediatricians and paediatric surgeons , I found my true clinical home : the surgical care of children . As mentors to me , these clinicians all shared the ability to take something apparently amazingly complex and distil it into a form that made me curious , and then they made me understand .
Back in 1984 , the internet had barely reached its infancy . Online journal searches did not exist . The movement of information was slow .
But while information is so much easier to get hold of today , not all of it is useful or true .
We need reliable medical sources that summarise the state of current knowledge at a time when some of our patients are at risk
Writing for GPs extends my reach beyond the walls of the hospital .
of disappearing down misinformation and myth-information wormholes .
In simple terms
As an educator , I have also been happy to help in any way I can in my area of expertise .
My familiarity with paediatric surgery hopefully allows me to see patterns and simplicities within the complexity and then to draw them out in a series of HTT articles to make life easier for you when faced with a paediatric surgical problem .
I am also given a chance to test ways of explaining things to an audience who already has significant expertise .
I also believe that the time I have spent writing HTTs for Australian Doctor has helped to make me a better paediatric surgeon .
I hope you continue to find them valuable .
Dr Claire Berman How to Treat editor at Australian Doctor .
AS Australian Doctor celebrates its 40th birthday , I have been reflecting on my more than a decade of working at the publication .
I am so fortunate to have a job that challenges and stretches me , offers me daily opportunities to learn , puts me in contact with a wide variety of fascinating people and surrounds me with creative and talented colleagues .
HTT is our flagship column ; our GP audience ’ s enthusiasm and support for the HTT series are unmatched .
All this does not just happen , of course . It takes months to bring an article into existence : from the list of possible clinical topics , to identifying a specialist author with the required expertise and standing , to the protracted process of reviewing and editing .
Yes , it also involves gentle , and sometimes not-so-gentle , reminders to those who miss deadlines , lose their paperwork or forget they agreed to write for us .
Then , the work of the Australian Doctor staff begins , with the production layout , subediting , proofing , further proofing and repeated checking .
A dedicated team does this work , so I want to pay tribute to the designers , subeditors , reviewers , and customer service and IT staff who have supported me over the past 10 years .
I also want to give a shout-out to all my distinguished predecessors for making HTT what it is now — not least Dr Steve Liang , Dr Ann Gregory , Dr Giovanna Zingarelli , Dr Marcela Cox , Dr Martine Walker and Dr Lynn Buglar . And finally , I want to thank my specialist authors , without whom none of this would be possible .
I hope they understand the enormous contribution they have made in supporting literally tens of thousands of GPs in their clinical practice and , through them , the huge difference they have made to patient care in this country .
So thank you for allowing me to ( gently ) persuade you .
Professor Jane Gunn , 1984 .
Professor Jane Gunn AO
Dean of the faculty of medicine , dentistry and health sciences at the University of Melbourne .
MY first interaction with Australian Doctor was discovering and then stockpiling the HTT supplements when I was a third-year medical student .
I was labouring under the demands of biochemistry , pathology , anatomy and physiology — and the clinical application of my knowledge seemed a distant glimmer .
Studying for my RACGP fellowship and RAN- ZCOG diploma exams , I would diligently rip out the HTT sections for revision . And as a practising GP , I continued to find them useful and engaging .
Fast-forward to the 2000s , and I had the honour of contributing my own HTT .
Now , I wonder what ChatGPT would make of the query “ read all the HTTs and list the top 10 recommendations for a GP ”!