Kill as few patients as possible

Professor Amanda Burls

Amanda Burls, Emeritus Professor at City University delivered a sparkling and hugely informative presentation to Sutton Catenians on September the 13^th. In a very inter-active talk, Professor Burls challenged medical thinking and assumptions about best practice in medicine, ‘common sense logic’ and the confidence people had in their own opinions on a range of conditions and practice. This has caused many unnecessary lives. One classic example is the failure to use over many, years to acknowledge and use best evidence in advising mothers on how to let babies’ sleep; on their backs or their fronts. Over 10,000 babies’ lives could have been saved.

Professor Burls believed there is an urgent need to a ‘top down’ drive to create a culture which systematically and regularly mandates clinicians to look for best evidence. In order to facilitate this need and to counter these barriers to use best evidence practices, Professor Burls has developed a free website which accesses the very best advice for any medical condition. It is:

http://www.bestevidence.info

We had a mixture of Catenians and visitors attending, resulting in great questions and hopefully meeting new friends. It was a highly stimulating and enjoyable event. Indeed, quotes some of the quotes from the evening were:

‘Excellent talk’..’Mind blowing facts from someone who knows her stuff’..’Some incredible facts and figures’….’I was spell bound’

A fuller summary of Professor Burls’ talk is found on History Corner.