Our Topic for discussion this week was Driving and Medical illness with regard to the DVLA medical regulations. It was instructive to look how these would impact on patients on the ward.
One way to bring driving history into our routine assessments is to regard driving as part of our ambulation/motility questions. If it is missed during initial clerking it should then come up as we approach discharge planning.
The DVLA has its at a glance guide which can be easily assessed but a good aide memoire for fitness to drive at patient.co.uk.
I missed the discussion about avoiding finding yourself out of your depth, but hope it stimulted some thought.
For Next Week:
Tuesday, please read the consensus document for the use of dabigatran in atrial fibrillation available from the Health Improvement Scotland website. You may find it useful to refer to the SMC detailed advice document to which their is a link on the same page.
Friday's two minute talks are on common tests. Please choose between d-dimer, troponin, CRP and choose another if there are enough people. We need to know when to use them and how to interpret them given the hard facts about their accuracy etc.
Interesting papers:
Can we reverse Factor Xa inhibitors
MJM
