Tools for Practice publishes 200th article!

With their recent article, “Harms of Medical Cannabinoids: Up in Smoke!” our Tools for Practice team celebrated their 200th article! For over eight years, this ACFP-supported team has been creating bi-weekly articles to summarize medical evidence on a clinical question, with a focus on information that can modify your day-to-day practice.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we asked the team to tell us about their favourite article, or biggest accomplishment so far.

Mike Allan: Controversial ones like cannabinoids, vaccines, salt, etc., are often the ones I feel we need to do but I dislike doing as I get tired of tilting at beliefs. The first ones were educational and I think by year two we were really starting to improve the methods. Santa (#177) was the funnest.

Mike Kolber:

1. Zostavax (#77) for its excellent review of why it’s important to look at absolute (not relative) benefits,
2. Zamboni procedure for MS (#43) for shedding light on a non-beneficial therapy.

Tina Korownyk: My favourite is Motivating Patients to Move (#5) because it provided an easy recommendation for a tool (pedometer to track physical activity) to incorporate into practice that also provides tangible results for patients.

Adrienne Lindblad: This is tough. Here are my top 10 and my reasons:

1. Aldosterone antagonists in HF (#104): It isn’t the best tool to read, but it was the first one I wrote and it definitely challenged my ideas of heart failure management, particularly around target doses,
2. Flu shot (#99, 100): I loved the controversy over this one. Some people said “wow it works better than I thought!” while others said “wow this is terrible!”
3. Santa (#177): It was fun and involved the whole group,
4. Diclectin (#186): It was very interesting to research, particularly with the attention the media was paying to the topic,
5. Salt (#86): I love the controversy and the sponsorship bias,
6. Treating to target (#110): Because it was an idea of Mike’s and I never thought I would be able to write it,
7. Antidepressant onset (#13): Because it changes our beliefs,
8. Infant sleep (#196): Because I have three kids and I like knowing that I haven’t permanently screwed up my kids … at least not from sleep training them!
9. MMR (#29): Because it made me really angry and highlights the importance of what we do,
10. Zostavax (#77): The best example of knowing absolute vs relative benefits. It was short, simple, and memorable.

With a sample size of 200, the evidence is clear: family physicians find Tools for Practice valuable. But we want to hear from you! What has been your favourite article? How has Tools for Practice impacted you and/or your practice?

Let us know through Twitter (use the hashtag #ToolsForPractice), on Facebook (follow “Alberta College of Family Physicians”), or in the comments below.