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Nearly half of the thousands of clinical trials conducted each year are for non-drug treatments. And yet effective non-drug methods are less well-known, less well-promoted, and less well-used than their pharmaceutical cousins. For the past six years the RACGP have been committed to developing an evidence-based handbook for non-drug treatments that mirrors the pharmacopoeias used in daily practice - the Handbook of Non-Drug interventions (HANDI).

CKN spoke with the key driver behind the handbook, Bond University’s Professor Paul Glasziou, and asked him to tell us about how HANDI is filling a gap in patient care and making effective non-drug treatments more visible and easier to use.

The Junior Doctor Survival Guide is a companion to the new students, interns and residents beginning their journeys as clinicians. Written by residents, for residents (and interns!), the Junior Doctor Survival Guide is a thorough summary of everything you need to know to get through your internship and residency, relatively intact.

A Monash Health study investigating inequalities in acute stroke care found Australians in rural areas are not receiving the same timely care as those in cities. Rural Australians will be treated for stroke in an average of just over three hours. This compares with two hours and 20 minutes for their city cousins. 

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Sleep problems, fatigue and attention difficulties in the weeks after a child's concussion injury could be a sign of reduced brain function and decreased grey matter.

Patients might not be getting the best advice about which treatments do or don't work, according to a recent Australian study. The researchers found professional societies are more likely to call out other health professionals for providing low-value treatments rather than look in their own backyards.

Aboriginal health workers in burn units, and greater cultural competence in clinicians and health services, are urgently needed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander burns patients who have the highest burn injury rates of all Australians.

Eradicating deadly staph using a new breed of antibiotics has revealed promising results in research released by QUT, helping to overcome one of the biggest modern medical challenges.

It's time to stop the endemic financial entanglement with industry that is distorting the production and use of healthcare evidence, causing harm to individuals and waste for health systems, argue an influential group of Australian and international experts in The BMJ. Too many tests, diagnoses, pills and procedures are wasting resources that could be better spent meeting genuine need. 

Queensland researchers from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute have shown that 22 different genes help to determine how much sun exposure a person needs to receive before developing melanoma. For people at high genetic risk, sun exposure in childhood is a strong contributing factor while people at low genetic risk develop melanoma only after a lifetime of exposure to sunlight.