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.

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.

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.

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.

New research from an Australian hospital puts the early readmission rate among cirrhotic patients well above international comparisons. A fifth of these readmissions might be preventable with better adherence to guidelines.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.