Talk Evidence - Inquiring about covid, burnout, and marginal data

It's October's Talk Evidence, and that means the autumn is upon us including those autumnal viruses. Here in the UK covid is on the rise, and Joe Ross is looking at some research on how good those elusive lateral flows are at detecting infection among people with symptoms of covid.

Juan will give us an update on the covid inquiry, the collection of analysis articles The BMJ is publishing looking at the interface of evidence and policy in our decisions about how to handle the pandemic.

Since the pandemic moral among clinicians in many health systems has fallen even further, workloads have spiralled. Coupled with other problems with workforce planning and investment in health and healthcare, this is increasing burnout - with a consequential impact on patient care. Helen will tell us about new research which is trying to put some numbers to how much clinican burnout effects patient outcomes

Finally, we're turning to a very clinical topic that we don't often cover in Talk Evidence - oncology, and some interesting insights into clearance margins in cancer surgery.

Reading list

Diagnostic accuracy of covid-19 rapid antigen tests with unsupervised self-sampling in people with symptoms in the omicron period
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071215

Guided by the science? Questions for the UK’s covid-19 public inquiry
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2066

Associations of physician burnout with career engagement and quality of patient care
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-070442

Margin status and survival outcomes after breast cancer conservation surgery

https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-070346