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Surrounded by cane fields, Babinda is a small sugar town located on the Bruce Highway around 60 kilometres south of Cairns. Up until now its claim to fame has been as the wettest town in Australia (with an astonishing 4.3m of rain per year). Now it can proudly say that one of its own has been awarded with the prestigious title of “Rural Doctor of the Year Award” for 2018.

Whether it’s during natural disasters, or over the summer festive season, CKN is always open.

CKN is designed to remain operational 24 x 7 through the worst of conditions – bushfires, cyclones, storms and floods. Even if QHEPS is temporarily unavailable at your hospital, or you aren’t able to make it in to work, wherever you have internet or mobile data coverage, you will also have access to CKN’s clinical information.

For health professionals in low and middle income countries independent, evidence-based, therapeutic information, is often not available or prohibitively expensive. One of CKN’s most widely used resources, Therapeutic Guidelines, is helping give back to countries throughout the region with their Therapeutic Guidelines Developing Countries Program.

Energy, calmness, empathy, maturity and intellectual curiosity may be protective, while impulsivity may harm the chances of longevity. Personality traits evident as early as the teenage years may be linked to a heightened or lessened risk of death around 50 years later, suggests observational research of ‘baby boomers’. 

How can a doctor predict the treatment outcome of an individual patient? Traditionally, the effectiveness of medical treatments is studied by randomised trials where patients are randomly divided into two groups: one of the groups is given treatment, and the other a placebo. However is this really the only reliable way to evaluate treatment effectiveness, or could something be done differently? How can the effectiveness of a treatment method be evaluated in practice? Could some patients benefit from a treatment that does not cause a response in others?

Nurses who work intermittent night shifts and lead an unhealthy lifestyle face an especially high risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a new study. The findings from the study are based on two long-term health studies on female nurses - Nurses’ Health Study (1988-2012) and Nurses’ Health Study II (1991-2013).

Newborn breastfed babies’ saliva combines with breastmilk to release antibacterial compounds that help to shape the bacterial communities (microbiota) in babies’ mouths, biomedical scientists have found.

Peer-led mentoring programs can help interns transition from university to the hospital environment but don’t address the underlying structural problems producing bullying, harassment, and mental health stigma.

Hypertension, smoking and diabetes increase heart attack risk in both sexes, but new research published in BMJ shows they have more impact in women than in men.

A study into postnatal depression (PND), found the odds of developing this condition increased by 79% when mothers had baby boys compared to baby girls.