Oxford Clinical Guidelines: Newly Qualified Doctor

Description:
Medical practice in the modern age requires familiarity with clinical guidelines and standards, which are often published separately in long and discursive documents. This new addition to the Oxford Medical Publications summarises the key clinical practice guidelines which all final year medical students and Foundation Year 1 and 2 doctors should know when managing common conditions. Logically organised by medical specialty, the reader can quickly familiarise themselves with the key principles of diagnosis and management at the appropriate level for beginning a new rotation on the wards.

Each guideline summary is tailored to the education level expected of doctors in their first two years of training, with clear instructions for when a more senior colleague should be called upon to help. Written by a team of junior doctors under the supervision of senior clinicians, this is the first resource to distil a range of guidelines from different locations (such as NICE, SIGN, and more) into an easily digestible format.

Practical and user-friendly, with tables, diagrams, flowcharts, and algorithms to convey the key points quickly and easily, Oxford Clinical Guidelines is the new invaluable resource for every final year medical student and doctor at the beginning of their training.

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Preface

Evidence-based guidelines have played an increasing role in medical practice in recent years. Healthcare professionals use guidelines to contend with the overwhelming wealth of available information and to translate scientific advances and new knowledge into safe clinical care.

The popularity of clinical guidelines has led to an exponential rise in guidelines being created since the 1980s and modern healthcare professionals are expected to be familiar with them. The General Medical Council’s (GMC) Good Medical Practice guidance, which records what is expected of every GMC-registered doctor, states: ‘You must be familiar with guidelines … that affect your work’. Such a directive is challenging to uphold. First, the range of available guidelines in every speciality is vast and constantly expanding. Furthermore, individual guidelines can be dense and lengthy, and are therefore impractical to comb through for a professional wishing to acquaint themselves quickly with current clinical approaches.

This publication seeks to address that challenge. Written by junior doctors, each chapter summarizes the key clinical evidence-based guidelines which shape UK practice and presents the information in an accessible and concise format. Where relevant, chapters provide brief additional contextual points in order to explain the guideline for those less familiar with the field. Junior doctors, in particular foundation doctors, will find this resource useful to rapidly familiarize themselves with the latest clinical guidelines for the commonest conditions that they encounter in both primary and secondary care. Students will find this book useful as a quick reference guide to better understand the patient journey.

Introduction: how to use this book
This book contains 123 chapters, covering a wide range of topics within internal medicine, surgery, emergency medicine, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, and psychiatry. The book is designed to cover the breadth of knowledge expected of a foundation doctor and it is pitched at this level. However, we would expect it to also be useful for medical students, specialist nurses, and junior specialist trainees (ST/CT 1–3 level).

This book is intended to be concise. Content which is relevant to multiple chapters will usually be noted once and other chapters will signpost to the primary mention.

Multiple guidelines exist for some topics and occasionally they conflict with each other in terms of their conclusions. It can be challenging for non-specialists to know which guideline they should follow. Each specialty section in this book has been overseen by at least one senior specialist consultant who has provided direction in identifying the most relevant and widely used guideline (or guidelines) to base each chapter upon. Readers should be aware that institutions often have their own local protocols which supersede the guidelines used in this publication.

The information in each chapter refers to adult patients only, except for chapters in the Resuscitation section (Part 17) where paediatric content is highlighted and chapters in the Paediatric section (Part 10). Where a drug is suggested as a treatment option, any dosages mentioned assume an otherwise healthy, non-pregnant adult with normal hepatic and renal function, and of average height and weight. Exceptions include chapters dealing with obstetrics, paediatrics, elderly medicine, hepatology, and nephrology. In all cases, the most recent British National Formulary or local protocols should be consulted to verify the drug choice, dosage, and any contraindications.