Author: Renu Roy

Returning from a Saturday morning outing to her favorite bakery with my husband, my daughter said, "Mom, I think there's nuts in this." She placed a square on the counter (with one small bite out of it) and as if on cue, a walnut came tumbling out of the bar. My daughter is anaphylactic to walnuts. [...]

Authors: Dr. Madan Roy and Dr. Samara Chitayat 

It will be helpful to watch the video clip below, prior to reading the blog post. The video illustrates the case of Jessica Barnett, a 17 year old with a missed diagnosis of Long QT syndrome. Reviewing some key points of her story can helps us learn and understand some valuable points on diagnostic errors. [...]

Author: Abhishek Bhartia 

"A leader must be able to define an ideal state and get people enthused about moving towards it" said Dr Prab Prabhakar, a consultant paediatric neurologist at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), as we sat down together in my office. I had met Dr Prabhakar a few months ago in London and was pleased that he was taking a day out of his vacation in India to visit us. [...]

Author: Kasia Muszynska

Jonny is 6 years old and he is about to go to a hospital for a second time in his life. He may not remember the first time, as he was only a baby, but it left him with a powerful reminder that hospitals are not a safe place to be - due to the wrong dosage of a medication he was given, he had partly lost his hearing. [...]

Author: Dr. Damian Roland

Children get ill. It is a predictable and universal event. The snotty nose, the frustrating cough, the clinginess of a high fever are all part and parcel of the challenge of parenthood. In the vast majority of cases, the unwell child comes nowhere near a health care professional. The self limiting illness resolving in a couple of days with a smiling toddler returned to their normal state of persistent mischief.

Unfortunately, there remain a variety of medical conditions, surgical complaints, and injuries that have devastating consequences for children and their families. [...] 

Author: Alan J. Card, PhD, MPH
 

Beyond Performance Management

The pandemic of avoidable patient harm may be the leading cause of death in many countries. But, rather than treating this as a public health crisis, policy makers around the world have largely treated it as a performance management issue. Responsibility for improvement is left to individual healthcare organizations and healthcare workers. [...]

Author: Dr. Simon Craig

Setting the Scene:
Your 3 year-old child has an allergy to peanuts. At a friend's birthday party, she is accidentally given a home-baked cookie. Within minutes, she is struggling for breath. You administer an EpiPen with minimal effect. [...]

Author: Darren Cooper 

Looking at comparable healthcare systems in Europe, the United Kingdom has the worst five-year average mortality and excess deaths in childhood. Yes, there have been improvements in the last twenty years, but not at the same level as in comparable countries. When looked at more closely, it is clearly a complex issue that requires joined-up thinking and real determination to resolve, but some of the key factors for these poor rates include: [...]

Authors: Dr. Medha Chillal; *Dr. Richard Neal; and Dr. Adrian Plunkett

We were interested to read the recent article, "Changes in Medical Errors after Implementation of a Handoff Program," by Starmer et al. (N Engl J Med 2014; 371:1803-1812) about the benefits of I-PASS. The I-PASS system has been adapted for use as a handover tool at the Birmingham Children’s Hospital Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) over the last year and has undergone iterative modification following feedback surveys to arrive at its current format. [...]

Author: Peter Hibbert

What percentage of children receive healthcare in line with clinical practice guideline recommendations? [...]