2006

Aug - Primary Care Electronic Library (PCEL)

Based at St. George's, University of London - the Primary Care Electronic Library has indexed and classified over one thousand internet sites relevant to primary care. The content of PCEL is quality assured, having been assessed for relevance by qualified medical professionals and members of the PCEL team. BestBETs is one of the emergency sites listed. To view the PCEL home page click here


2005

Feb - BBC

BestBETs becomes a 'related link' website listing for the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Case Notes' series. Tuesday 8th Feb - Wound Healing

2004

Oct - 'How to do a BET'

Guidance for BestBET authors on how to construct a BET is now available via the participation page.

Accumulator BETs

The first Accumulator BET on Atraumatic Pleuritic Chest Pain (Hogg K, Brown G, Mackway Jones K. Accumulator BET: a traumatic pleuritic chest pain Emerg Med J 2003;20:372) is now available to view online.

Sept - New dates for 2005 BestBET courses

New dates for the BestBETs courses for 2005 have now been confirmed for 8th/9th February, 28/29th April, 13/14th June and 10/11th November. Further details and information regarding reserving your place on the course can be found on the course page.

June - Updated RCT filter from Cochrane

Please note that due to changes in Medline tags the Cochrane Highly Sensitive RCT filter has been updated. Line 8 of the filter should now read ANIMALS.sh. not HUMAN.sh. (change of animal.sh to plural animals.sh). The updated filter can be accessed via the Cochrane Reviewers Handbook by clicking on Appendices > Appendix 5b.

June - Sign-up for the BestBETs newsletter

The newsletter will be sent out quarterly as an email message with around 30-60 lines of text. It is designed to be short and informative for busy clinicians without taking up precious mail-box space. The first newsletter will be sent out in July. If you would like to keep up-to-date with new features and future BestBETs developments on site then sign-up for the newsletter 'here'.

Feb - Faculty of Accident and Emergency Medicine CPD and BestBets

The Faculty of Accident and Emergency Medicine has agreed that work towards creating a BET may count towards CPD. BETs that reach orange, yellow or green (approved by BESTBET editors,electronic preprint or paper publication) count as publications. BETs that reach blue status may be counted towards personal study.

It has been agreed that a primary BET author could claim 5 credits per BET with a maximum of 10 credits per year (the maximum allowed under publications.)

2003

Oct - 'BETting on Clinical Evidence' BestBETS EBM Courses 2004

Due to the success of our locally run BestBETs course we are now offering our course to anyone who wishes to attend. The 2 day course is designed as an introduction to the principles and practice of EBM and consists of lectures, online demonstrations and workshops in which participants are encouraged to contribute to through recalling their own experiences of EBM, problems encountered and simple exercises. Small group workshops are also used to guide participants through the critical appraisal process. Day one introduces participants to the principles of EBM and how to search for the evidence. Day two concentrates on the critical appraisal process and how to synthesize all the evidence in order to make sense of it all. Further information can be found under 'Future Teaching'.

Sept - BETs published in Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery

Cardiothoracic surgery BETs are now being published quarterly Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery. Edited by Joel Dunning (RCS Research Fellow, Manchester Royal Infirmary) the unique nature of Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery allows the BETs to be published on the website prior to publication. Clinicians are then invited to review and comment on each BET, thus allowing widespread critical appraisal of the BET content.

Aug - BETs titles available for completion

BETs are usually completed within 6 months of being posted on the website. In some instances it is not possible for the author to complete their registered BET. The questions still need answering in order to increase the evidence base. BET titles, which have been relinquished by the author are now available for anyone to complete. The list of available BETs titles can be found under the ‘News’ section along with details on how to register the BET under your own name. The available BETs can also be identified in the browse list of BET titles by the icon

July - Accumulator BETs for care pathways

A leading article in the July edition of the EMJ (Mackway-Jones K, Carley S. Accumulating knowledge: five years of BETs. EMJ 2003;20:304-305.) describes how BETs have been used to develop a care pathway for atraumatic pleuritic chest pain (Hogg K, Brown G, Mackway Jones K. Accumulator BET: a traumatic pleuritic chest pain Emerg Med J 2003;20:372). The Accumulator BET is the first in an occassional series which will be published as the number of BETs in a particular area increase.

2002

Oct - New additions to the BestBETs website

BestBETs Critical Appraisal database

BestBETs launches a new critical appraisal database incorporated within the existing site. Appraisal tool checklists are now available for use online or downloading as an aid to the critical appraisal process. Fourteen BestBETs checklists can be found under 'Resources' and 'Submit' , covering paper types ranging from Diagnosis, Cohort and Case-control through to Economic, Guidelines and Qualitative. In an attempt to make the BET decision process more transparent BET authors can now attach their critical appraisals to the relevant papers in the BET table.

Critical appraisal titles can be searched for in the same way as BETs or viewed directly from the BET by clicking on the green CA icon in the Author field of the BET table.

To submit a critical appraisal click on 'Database' in the menu on the left hand side and then 'Submit'. Once you have logged in you then have the option to submit a BET or critical appraisal. The online instructions will then guide you through the submission process.

BestBETs subject tree

BETs and Critical Appraisals can now be browsed by category using the subject tree.

BestBETs search filters

A new page has been added under the Links section for BETs search strategies. Background on methodological search filters is available along with links to filters on the www and instructions on their use. BestBET subject filters will also be made available here.

Sept - BestBETs Paediatric filter

BestBETs Information Officers presented a Paediatric filter poster at the 8th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries, Cologne, 16-21 September 2002. The poster outlines the methods used to develop and test a search strategy for paediatrics. The filter is available for downloading in PDF format from the BETs search strategies page.

June - BestBETs at the 9th ICEM in Edinburgh

BestBETs introduced new and exciting developments to the website at the 9th ICEM in Edinburgh in June. The abstract of the presentation is now available.

Wylie K, Jenkins M. BestBETs: The critical appraisal database. Emerge Med J 2002;19(Suppl):A50.

April - BestBETs recommended in the BMJ

BestBETs is recommended as an additional educational resource in a clinical review in April's BMJ.

Recent developments: Emergency medicine.
Daniel M Fatovich
BMJ 2002;324:958-962.

2001

Nov - "This (BestBETs) is a fantastic resource..." NHS Magazine

wwwwatch - Harry Brown

"Not a betting site, but one trying to promote best practice in the specialty of emergency medicine. This is from the Manchester Royal Infirmary and 'bets' stands for 'best evidence topics'. Topics are explored using the principles of evidence-based medicine, then a short report is issued and is available on-line.

The list of topics can be found at http://www.bestbets.org/cgi-bin/browse.pl and each report is coded according to its position of completion. This is a fantastic resource for emergency physicians and helps to encourage bringing good clinical evidence from the literature into everyday practice. Producing a report is an educational experience, but it can be time consuming. Placing them in an easy-to-access format such as this allows a much wider audience to access and review.

Perhaps one day all specialties will have a similar and comprehensive bank of subjects, which can easily be accessed by frontline health professionals. The Internet is an ideal method for achieving this and the website showcases what can be done."

Read the full review in the November 2001 issue of the NHS magazine.

Nov - BETs published in Archives of Disease in Childhood

Paediatric BETS are now being published in the Archimedes section of Archives of Disease in Childhood.

May - "BestBETs is a good resource for emergency physicians" ACP Journal Club

"... I found the site (BestBETs) easy to use. For example, I was interested in determining whether prophylactic antibiotics prevent infection in patients with dog bites, and within 80 seconds, I was able to retrieve an answer (antibiotics prevent infection, number needed to treat of 14). Retrieval times that are this short make the Web site suitable for real-time clinical practice. Another strength of the site is the provision of search details, allowing interested (or skeptical) users to replicate the search..."

BestBETs
Gareth Quin
ACP Journal Club 2001 May-June;134:A19.

2000

July - Journal announces launch of BestBETs.org

The July 2000 edition of the Emergency Medicine Journal (formerly the Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine) carried a leading article by Kevin Mackway-Jones and Simon Carley, introducing this site (Mackway-Jones K, Carley S. Bestbets.org: Odds on favourite for evidence in emergency medicine reaches the world wide web. Emergency Medicine Journal 2000;17:235-236). The Journal has been closely involved with BETs from their inception, and has published around 60 BETs to date. It is expected that many more BETs will be brought to the world through the Journal.

This website will become a new focus of attention for EBM in emergency medicine, however, and will carry new BETs as soon as they are written. Visit often!