A few of our favorite unconfirmed ideas.
Abstract
Medical practice is rooted in our dependence on the best available evidence from incremental
scientific experimentation and rigorous clinical trials. Progress toward determining
the true worth of ongoing practice or suggested innovations can be glacially slow
when we insist on following the stepwise scientific pathway, and a prevailing but
imperfect paradigm often proves difficult to challenge. Yet most experienced clinicians
and clinical scientists harbor strong thoughts about how care could or should be improved,
even if the existing evidence base is thin or lacking. One of our Future of Critical
Care Medicine conference sessions encouraged sharing of novel ideas, each presented
with what the speaker considers a defensible rationale. Our intent was to stimulate
insightful thinking and free interchange, and perhaps to point in new directions toward
lines of innovative theory and improved care of the critically ill. In what follows,
a brief background outlines the rationale for each novel and deliberately provocative
unconfirmed idea endorsed by the presenter.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Critical CareCritical Illness
Evidence-Based Medicine
Forecasting
Humans
Thinking
Ventilation
Wit and Humor as Topic
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12987Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1186/cc14719Publication Info
Marini, John J; Gattinoni, Luciano; Ince, Can; Kozek-Langenecker, Sibylle; Mehta,
Ravindra L; Pichard, Claude; ... Vincent, Jean-Louis (2015). A few of our favorite unconfirmed ideas. Crit Care, 19 Suppl 3. pp. S1. 10.1186/cc14719. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12987.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Paul Edmund Wischmeyer
Professor of Anesthesiology
Paul Wischmeyer M.D., EDIC, FASPEN, FCCM is a critical care, perioperative, and nutrition
physician-researcher who specializes in enhancing preparation and recovery from surgery,
critical care and COVID-19. He serves as a Tenured Professor of Anesthesiology and
Surgery at Duke. He also serves as the Associate Vice Chair for Clinical Research
in the Dept. of Anesthesiology and Director of the TPN/Nutrition Team at Duke. Dr.
Wischmeyer earned his medical degree with honors at T

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