Pomegranate Health
Welcome to Pomegranate Health, a podcast about the culture of medicine. You’ll hear clinicians, academics and advocates discuss some big questions; How can one make difficult clinical and ethical decisions free from bias? How can communication with patients and peers be improved? How can healthcare delivery be made more equitable and efficient?
This is also the home of IMJ On-Air, where authors of the College's Internal Medicine Journal present their work. Expert advice on the current best standards for your practice.
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At each page there is a MyCPD link for Fellows to log credits for participating in educational activity. Please continue the discussion in the comments section below each episode.
Latest episodes
Ep94: Facing up to racial bias
There is systematic variation in delivery of care to culturally diverse patients in all fields of medicine. This podcast highlights the subtle biases that affect clinical decision-making by practitioners and provision of services at an institutional level.
Ep93: The rise and fall of mpox
In 2022 a sexually transmitted form of mpox virus made its way around the developed world but it had long been endemic in African countries. In this podcast we talk about the conditions that allowed new strains to evolve and the rapid community health response that reigned the global outbreak in.
Ep92: Data-driven practice improvement
The field known as Practice Analytics seeks to provide clinicians with a bird’s eye view of their case load and performance. This can draw attention to cases that stood out from the trend and help reflection and practice improvement.
[IMJ On-Air] Hyperglycaemia and COVID-19
In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, international studies showed that pre-existing diabetes conferred a significant mortality risk. Researchers have retrospectively examined electronic medical records in two Melbourne health services to find no such association.
Ep89: What we know about long COVID
ADAPT is a prospective cohort study that has been following up COVID-19 patients on various different outcome measures. This has allowed researchers to identify potential physiological and immunological signals that distinguish people who experience long COVID.
[IMJ On-Air] Making sense of HACs
Hospital-acquired complications are assumed to be preventable and to provide some metric of quality of care. But HACs may be more strongly associated with patient-related factors than they are with deviation from best practice.
[IMJ On-Air] Managing cannabinoid use in palliative care
Patients in palliative care settings may be more inclined than most to complementary and alternative medicines, including cannabinoid products. But they are also more vulnerable to side effects given impairments to their drug metabolism and clearance mechanisms.
[IMJ On-Air] Recent advances in asthma management
This is the first episode of a new format featuring authors and editors of the Internal Medicine Journal. In this episode we have leading respiratory physicians from the Royal Melbourne Hospital presenting current best practice in the diagnosis and treatment of severe asthma.
Ep85: The ASD Odyssey- a reply
Despite guideline recommendations for assessment and diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders there are drivers in the health system that dissuade clinicians from implementing these. These include reimbursement and training in the area of developmental disorders.