Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Our journals
    • Clinical Medicine
    • Future Healthcare Journal
  • Subject collections
  • About the RCP
  • Contact us

Clinical Medicine Journal

  • ClinMed Home
  • Content
    • Current
    • Ahead of print
    • Archive
  • Author guidance
    • Instructions for authors
    • Submit online
  • About ClinMed
    • Scope
    • Editorial board
    • Policies
    • Information for reviewers
    • Advertising

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
RCP Journals
Home
  • Log in
  • Home
  • Our journals
    • Clinical Medicine
    • Future Healthcare Journal
  • Subject collections
  • About the RCP
  • Contact us
Advanced

Clinical Medicine Journal

clinmedicine Logo
  • ClinMed Home
  • Content
    • Current
    • Ahead of print
    • Archive
  • Author guidance
    • Instructions for authors
    • Submit online
  • About ClinMed
    • Scope
    • Editorial board
    • Policies
    • Information for reviewers
    • Advertising

Do you need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?

Anton Emmanuel
Download PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmed.ed.22.1.1
Clin Med January 2022
Anton Emmanuel
Roles: Editor-in-chief
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info & Metrics
Loading

The new year dawns for many clinicians with the familiar dichotomous feeling of good intentions for the year ahead but doubts about repeating past missteps. And the latest wave of the COVID pandemic only serves to accentuate that division, as the pressures of clinical work make it hard to plan beyond the end of the next shift. The role of a journal like Clin Med is especially relevant at times when physicians are often working beyond their specialty area in terms of keeping abreast of best practice. This edition therefore features several papers offering updated guidance for common inpatient scenarios – our intention is to be a handy weatherman, rather than detailed forecaster.

With the upsurge of COVID-19 related admissions, it is timely to publish a collaborative paper on how scores for community acquired pneumonia and sepsis perform as risk stratification tools in COVID-19 infected patients in the first wave of the pandemic.1 It will not be a surprise that these tools proved ineffective in stratifying these patients, most likely because most were derived and validated in very different patient cohorts. As such it highlights the importance of developing appropriate tools, possibly including social determinants of health, to aid clinician decision making with COVID-19 admissions. That this study was produced by a trainee collaborative highlights another dimension of the clinician response to the challenges of the pandemic.

The difficulties in the acute care setting are matched by those faced in the follow up of patients and as we try to ensure the recovery of elective services. The article by Anstey et al2 describes a way of evaluating radiological recovery from COVID within a resource-constrained service. The authors describe how they adapted British Thoracic Society guidelines and developed a clinico-radiological multidisciplinary team to help assign post-COVID-19 admission care. The paper reports both patient outcomes and resource optimisation and will hopefully help other hospital teams plan follow-up needs effectively.

The Centre for Perioperative Care recently produced guidelines for peri-operative care of people with diabetes, who are known to have an increased risk of complications. Individually tailored pre-operative care and clear communication between specialist teams and the patient are the key focus. The summary of this guidance3 will be of great practical valuable to trainee doctors caring for these patients on the wards. Equally valuable to those trainee doctors who are revising is this month's CME section on tropical diseases – a read of these high-quality reviews will help in not having to ‘skip’ those questions in exams. There are also summaries of the NICE guideline on atrial fibrillation (specifically with regard to wearable technology)4 and a state-of-the-art review for the non-specialist of the indications for kidney biopsy.5 We are also honoured to publish Sir Peter Ratcliffe's Harveian oration on how cells can sense and adapt to changing oxygen availability. Oxygen sensing is key to a number of pathophysiological processes, from immune dysfunction to chronic renal failure and cancer.6 The potential for drug development to activate or block the oxygen-sensing mechanisms, and thereby have an effect on a wide range of disorders is an exciting take-away from the lecture.

Moving forward, ClinMed is a key component of the emerging Royal College of Physicians research strategy, and we anticipate featuring the same diversity of content, with a strong focus on the practical, but strengthening the research domain. As the journal's impact factor climbs (now 2.659) we look forward to jointly developing our clinical research content.

  • © Royal College of Physicians 2022. All rights reserved.

References

  1. ↵
    1. Ahmed A
    , Alderazi SA, Aslam R, et al. Utility of severity assessment tools in COVID-19 pneumonia: a multicentre observational study. Clin Med 2022;22:63–70.
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
  2. ↵
    1. Anstey R
    , Rossdale J, Dereham A, et al. Screening success: A virtual MDT can reduce the number of patients requiring respiratory follow-up post-COVID-19 pneumonia in line with British Thoracic Society guidance. Clin Med 2022;22:45–50.
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
  3. ↵
    1. Grant B
    , Chowdhury TA. New guidance on the perioperative management of diabetes. Clin Med 2022;22:41–4.
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
  4. ↵
    1. Briosa e Gala
    , Pope MTB, Leo M, et al. NICE atrial fibrillation guideline snubs wearable technology: a missed opportunity? Clin Med 2022;22:77–82.
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
  5. ↵
    1. Hull KL
    , Adenwalla SF, Topham P, Graham-Brown MP. Indications and considerations for kidney biopsy: an overview of clinical considerations for the non-specialist. Clin Med 2022;22:34–40.
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
  6. ↵
    1. Ratcliife P
    . Harveian Oration 2020: Elucidation of molecular oxygen sensing mechanisms in human cells: implications for medicine. Clin Med 2022;22:23–33.
    OpenUrlFREE Full Text
Back to top
Previous articleNext article

Article Tools

Download PDF
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Citation Tools
Do you need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?
Anton Emmanuel
Clinical Medicine Jan 2022, 22 (1) 1; DOI: 10.7861/clinmed.ed.22.1.1

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Share
Do you need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?
Anton Emmanuel
Clinical Medicine Jan 2022, 22 (1) 1; DOI: 10.7861/clinmed.ed.22.1.1
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • References
  • Info & Metrics

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • PubMed
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Making 2022 a learning and reflective year
  • Cornerstones to progressing the physician associate profession: post-qualification training and development
  • Safety first
Show more Editorial

Similar Articles

FAQs

  • Difficulty logging in.

There is currently no login required to access the journals. Please go to the home page and simply click on the edition that you wish to read. If you are still unable to access the content you require, please let us know through the 'Contact us' page.

  • Can't find the CME questionnaire.

The read-only self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) can be found after the CME section in each edition of Clinical Medicine. RCP members and fellows (using their login details for the main RCP website) are able to access the full SAQ with answers and are awarded 2 CPD points upon successful (8/10) completion from:  https://cme.rcplondon.ac.uk

Navigate this Journal

  • Journal Home
  • Current Issue
  • Ahead of Print
  • Archive

Related Links

  • ClinMed - Home
  • FHJ - Home
clinmedicine Footer Logo
  • Home
  • Journals
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
HighWire Press, Inc.

Follow Us:

  • Follow HighWire Origins on Twitter
  • Visit HighWire Origins on Facebook

Copyright © 2021 by the Royal College of Physicians