Please login with your free MJA account to view this article in full
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
Objective: To evaluate the influence of medical specialty on the likelihood of doctors making the Naughty or Nice lists this Christmas.
Design, setting, and participants: A quantitative observational study. Doctors in a medical parent Facebook group were asked about their specialty and their tendency to follow recipes.
Main outcome measures: Self-reported tendency to follow the recipe (always, sometimes, never) as an indicator of rule-breaking behaviour, extrapolated as indicating Naughty (unlikely to follow a recipe) or Nice (always follow recipes) tendencies, and consequently the likelihood of being included in the Nice list this Christmas.
Results: The majority of doctors in only 19% of specialties made the Nice list. When aggregated, 92% of surgical specialties reported that they either never followed recipes or did so only occasionally. Similarly, 80% of physician specialties reported being Naughty. In contrast, 50% each of those in critical care specialties were Naughty or Nice. General practitioners comprised the largest single group of respondents, and only 8% identified as Nice.
Conclusions: An overwhelming majority of medical parents were Naughty. As Santa makes his list and checks it twice, he will find out who is Naughty or Nice, and he may be surprised at the number of doctors who are on the wrong side of the inventory. When Santa Claus comes to town, he should be circumspect when indulging in any baked offerings by the Christmas tree, particularly those offered by surgeons and general practitioners.
Please login with your free MJA account to view this article in full
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
No relevant disclosures.
Objectives: To determine the proportion of children visited by the Tooth Fairy, the child-related factors that influence the likelihood of her visit, and the parent-related variables that affect the amount of money the Tooth Fairy leaves.
Design: Cross-sectional questionnaire study.
Setting: Zürich, Switzerland.
Participants: 3617 parents of children (mean age of children, 6.8 years; 51.9% girls) who had lost at least one deciduous tooth received a self-developed questionnaire; 1274 questionnaires were returned (35.2%).
Main outcome measures: Primary outcome variables were the Tooth Fairy’s visit after tooth loss and the amount of money given in case of a visit. Child- and parent-related variables were assessed as predictors of the main outcomes.
Results: Most parents (71.0%) reported that the Tooth Fairy visited their child. She usually exchanged the lost tooth for money (55.8% of visits) or placed money next to the tooth (40.7%); rarely did she take the tooth without pecuniary substitution. The Tooth Fairy left an average of 7.20 Swiss francs (approximately AU$9.45). The Tooth Fairy favoured visiting for the teeth of older children (odds ratio [OR], per year, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.09–3.21), of boys (OR, 2.65; 95% CI, 1.09–6.42), and of children who believed in her (OR, 4.12; 95% CI, 1.77–9.64). The amount of money was influenced by maternal, but not paternal socio-demographic factors, including level of education (OR, per level, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.66–0.92) and country of origin (OR, Western countries v non-Western countries, 2.35; 95% CI, 1.20–4.62).
Conclusions: The Tooth Fairy does not visit all children after tooth loss, displaying clear preferences in her choice of business partners. The odds of a visit are dramatically increased if she is believed in, and the value of a deciduous tooth is influenced by socio-demographic factors.
Please login with your free MJA account to view this article in full
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
No relevant disclosures.
His gravelly voice became one of the successful politician’s most defining features
Neville Kenneth Wran was the colourful and charismatic Premier of New South Wales from 1976 to 1986. He was widely respected for his quick wit, engaging informality, and committed representation of blue collar voters. The youngest of eight siblings, he was born in 1926 and raised in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, then a working class stronghold of the Australian Labor Party1 (Box 1).
The full article is accessible to AMA members and paid subscribers. Login to read more or purchase a subscription now.
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
No relevant disclosures.
The planet will continue to revolve in the face of declining ecosystem health and diversity, but how will the human species fare in 20, or 200, years? Is there a health framework to resist the free market call to relentless expansion, economic growth and profit? What is our role as doctors in advocating for the voiceless, future inhabitants of this planet?
The full article is accessible to AMA members and paid subscribers. Login to read more or purchase a subscription now.
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
In multicultural Australia, whatever your religious beliefs or cultural background, we celebrate together the summer holiday period and our shared values of family and community. On behalf of the entire MJA team, we welcome you to the 2017 Christmas issue of the Journal, a tradition in which we strive to amuse and entertain our readers over the holiday season.
Please login with your free MJA account to view this article in full
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
No relevant disclosures.
Introduction: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterised by persistent respiratory symptoms and chronic airflow limitation, and is associated with exacerbations and comorbidities. Advances in the management of COPD are updated quarterly in the national COPD guidelines, the COPD-X plan, published by Lung Foundation Australia in conjunction with the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand and available at http://copdx.org.au.
Main recommendations:
Changes in management as result of the guideline: Spirometry remains the gold standard for diagnosing airflow obstruction and COPD. Non-pharmacological and pharmacological treatment should be used in a stepwise fashion to control symptoms and reduce exacerbation risk.
The full article is accessible to AMA members and paid subscribers. Login to read more or purchase a subscription now.
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
We thank Lung Foundation Australia and the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand for their support in the preparation of these guidelines.
The conflict of interest declarations for Ian Yang, Johnson George, Sue Jenkins, Christine McDonald, Vanessa McDonald, Brian Smith, Nick Zwar and Eli Dabscheck are listed on the Lung Foundation Australia website ().
Spirometry remains the cornerstone of respiratory function testing and is the key to diagnosing and monitoring the most common respiratory disorders. Spirometry measures how quickly the air can empty from the lungs (flow) and how much air can be moved during a maximal expiration (volume). It is a valuable clinical tool to detect diseases that impair respiratory function, help exclude respiratory disease as a cause of current symptoms, assess the severity of any impairment in function, and monitor the effects of any therapeutic intervention or of disease progression.
The full article is accessible to AMA members and paid subscribers. Login to read more or purchase a subscription now.
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
Series editors
Balakrishnan (Kichu) Nair
Simon O’Connor
No relevant disclosures.
It is time for legal action to recover health care costs from the tobacco industry
Australia’s 2011 precedent-setting plain packaging legislation1 reinforced the country’s reputation within the tobacco industry as “the darkest market in the world”.2 The country’s commitment to tobacco control, and a declining national smoking rate that is among the lowest in the world should not, however, mislead the public or policy makers into a mistaken belief that tobacco is done.
The full article is accessible to AMA members and paid subscribers. Login to read more or purchase a subscription now.
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
Ross MacKenzie is supported by the National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health, grant no. R01-CA091021.
No relevant disclosures.
Despite being addictive and deadly, tobacco is widely accessible in all communities
Given that two-thirds of regular smokers in Australia will die from smoking-related causes,1 tobacco is remarkably available and easy to purchase. Tobacco is sold in every community, on every high street and in every retail precinct. Australian consumers can freely purchase cigarettes in the same places where they buy healthy household staples such as fruit and vegetables, milk and bread. With an estimated 40 000 outlets selling tobacco across Australia,2 it is one of the most widely accessible consumer goods on the market — yet the most dangerous when used as intended. While Australia has delivered crippling hits to the tobacco industry’s ability to promote its products, we have yet to land even a glancing blow to how and where it sells its products.
The full article is accessible to AMA members and paid subscribers. Login to read more or purchase a subscription now.
Please note: institutional and Research4Life access to the MJA is now provided through Wiley Online Library.
On 31 May 2017, I attended the Tobacco Retail Summit hosted by the Cancer Council New South Wales. Australian and international speakers and participants discussed reforming the tobacco retail sector and I am indebted to their collective wisdom in helping inform this commentary.
No relevant disclosures.
Summary
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the Sith Lord Karness Muur engineered the rakghoul plague, a disease that transformed infected humans into near-mindless predatory rakghouls. At its peak, the disease infected millions of individuals, giving rise to armies of rakghouls on a number of planets. Whether rakghoul populations have persisted until this day is not known, making a rakghoul invasion on Earth not completely improbable. Further, a strategy for defence against an outbreak of the disease on Earth has not yet been proposed. To fill this glaring gap, we developed the first mathematical model of the population dynamics of humans and rakghouls during a rakghoul plague outbreak. Using New South Wales as a model site, we then obtained ensembles of model predictions for the outcome of the rakghoul plague in two different disease control strategy scenarios (population evacuation and military intervention), and in the absence thereof. Finally, based on these predictions, we propose a set of policy guidelines for successfully controlling and eliminating outbreaks of the rakghoul plague in Australian states.