Drug Breakdown: carbamazepine

Day 1: #carbamazepine was discovered mid 1950s as a tricyclic compound related to imipramine and was found to be effective for trigeminal neuralgia. Animal studies showed an anti-epileptic effect,...

Care continues to shine in difficult times

This has been a truly exceptional year for the world, the UK, the NHS and us as healthcare professionals. For me 2020 has been a true year of ups and downs and I mean this personally and...

Treating and preventing COVID-19: how close are we?

The antibody drug, Regeneron, was partially credited for successfully treating outgoing American President Donald Trump. It has now received emergency approval in the US for use in people who have...

COVID-19, coagulopathy and clotting abnormalities

This review article from Tokyo in Japan was published in March 2020 and outlined what was being seen by clinicians dealing with ill patients in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (Iba et al,...

The ethics of COVID-19 vaccine trials

Prescribing within clinical toxicology

Regional NHS poisoning treatment centres were first established in the 1960s following the Atkins and Hill reports, which highlighted significant concerns regarding poisoning management nationally...

Achieving and maintaining competency as a nurse independent non-medical prescriber

‘Prescribing by a practitioner (eg doctor, dentist, nurse, pharmacist) responsible and accountable for the assessment of patients with undiagnosed or diagnosed conditions and for decisions about the...

The work goes on

Keeping infant vaccination ‘on the agenda’ as we enter a busy winter period

This winter is likely to be a particularly challenging one for the NHS. As the wider healthcare community continues to pull together to fight COVID-19 and minimise the impact of a range of infectious...

Drug breakdown: dabigatran

Day 1: As the first new/non-vitamin K oral anti-coagulant (NOAC) in class and the first warfarin alternative for 50 years, #dabigatran was licensed in the USA/UK in 2010–11 for the treatment and...

Novel application of ozone therapy for current and emerging diseases

In 1929, a book entitled ‘Ozone and its therapeutic actions’ was published, detailing more than 100 diseases that could be treated by O3 therapy (Juchniewicz and Lubkowska, 2020), and our knowledge of...

End-of-life care in a global pandemic

This editorial considers how end-of-life decision making has been impacted by the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic (Pattison, 2020). They state that the ‘unprecedented and unfolding global has forced healthcare...