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Winner of the eJournal Club Submission for November/December 2023 announced
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Winner of the eJournal Club Submission for November/December 2023 announced

Congratulations Dr Stephen Connolly

Congratulations to Dr Stephen Connolly who submitted the winning review for the November/December 2023 round of the eJournal Club. Dr Connolly's submission was a review of a journal article about the preventative effect of inhaled amikacin on preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia. You can read Dr Connolly's winning submission here. (PDF, 100KB)

Dr Stephen Connolly is an Infectious Diseases SpR from Westmeath. His main interests within ID are broad and include HIV, sexual health, inclusion/migrant health and complex bacterial infections. His ambitions are to improve access to routine STI and HIV care in Ireland, particularly for the homeless and among beneficiaries of temporary protection. 

He explains that he was lucky enough on his Higher Specialist Training Scheme to have had the opportunity to work within intensive care medicine. He was struck by the rate at which patients developed ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) a common yet devastating complication of ICU stay that confers both increased mortality but also length of stay. 

He goes on to say that “one of the many lessons we’ve learned from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is how important a resource ICU beds are to our country, and novel strategies such as these to mitigate such complications are welcome”. Dr Connolly adds: “This trial falls short in its execution of changing practice however much can be learned from where it doesn’t succeed, particularly in the importance of realistic case definitions in clinical research”. 

About the eJournal Club

Launched in October 2019, the eJournal Club is a unique opportunity to share your reviews of practice-changing articles with over 1,000 doctors. An initiative of the RCPI Trainees' Committee, the eJournal Club is open to doctors in Internal Medicine who are registered on a Basic Specialist Training (BST) programme, Higher Specialist Training (HST) programme, International Residency Training Programme (IRTP) or the International Clinical Fellowship Programme (ICFP) with the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

Find out more about the eJournal Club