Sharing health evidence you can trust
In this blog, Karen Morley, who in 2018 wrote for Evidently Cochrane about her experiences of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and how evidence helped her, tells us what has happened since, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on her mental health, the challenges, and things she has found empowering.
A new WHO guideline on postnatal care puts a positive experience at the heart of the care that women and their babies receive in the first six weeks after birth. It recognises that care should go beyond the mere delivery of certain services. Good postnatal care should aim to meet every individual woman’s needs, leaving all new parents, the baby and family with a positive experience of this critical period in their lives.
In this blog for people with Raynaud’s phenomenon, Dr Kevin Su, a Rheumatologist from Australia, looks at the latest Cochrane evidence on vasodilator drugs for Primary Raynaud’s phenomenon. Katie LeBlanc, a patient advocate, reflects on her experiences.
After her son was diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Genna White became a Speech and Language Therapist to help families like her own. In this blog, Genna reflects on what DLD is and what she’d like parents, healthcare workers, and others working with children to know.
Karen Morley reflects on her experience of becoming a consumer author on a Cochrane Review, using her lived experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and considers the questions it raised for her about Public Involvement in research.
Peter Buckle, a patient advocate whose wife died of glioblastoma, and Professor Scott Murray, GP and palliative care innovator, call for honest communication between health professionals and people with glioblastoma and their families, enabling shared decision-making and planning, with a focus on quality of life. They give sources of information and support for patients and families, and practical suggestions for clinicians.
This blog summarises a conversation hosted on Twitter by Cochrane UK, inviting views on the use and misuse of language when talking about long-term conditions.
In this blog for anyone affected by, or interested in, long-term conditions, Anne Cooper, a person with Type 1 Diabetes, Bob Swindell, a person with Type 2 Diabetes, and Cathy Lloyd, Professor of Health Studies at the Open University, explore the impact language can have on people who live with a long-term condition, including helpful tips for healthcare professionals for choosing helpful and appropriate language.
In the second part of a two-part blog for our special series on living with long-term conditions, Brian Devlin, Ceri Dare, Genna White and Olivia Fulton, the four Cochrane UK Consumer Champions, and Emma Doble, Cochrane UK’s Patient and Consumer Coordinator, reflect on making treatment decisions, what they want healthcare professionals to know, and what they would tell their younger selves.
In the first part of a two-part blog for our special series on living with long-term conditions, Ceri Dare, Brian Devlin, Olivia Fulton and Genna White, the four Cochrane UK Consumer Champions, and Emma Doble, Cochrane UK’s Patient and Consumer Co-ordinator, reflect on the daily burden of work that comes with living with a long-term condition, how they’ve managed during the pandemic, and sources of information and support they find useful.
In this blog for patients and doctors, Dr Mark Horowitz, training psychiatrist and Clinical Research Fellow at University College London, looks at the latest Cochrane evidence on how to safely stop antidepressants and explores the implications for patients and doctors having to navigate this area so neglected by medical researchers. Mark’s personal experience of the difficulty in coming off antidepressants led to an interest in the little-understood field of stopping psychiatric medication, and the balance of harms and benefits.
Throughout June, we are shining a spotlight on living with long-term conditions, sharing blogs that include relevant evidence and personal reflections. The series will also include a discussion on Twitter about the impact language can have on people with long-term conditions.