Targets, trends, excesses, and deficiencies: refocusing clinical investigation to improve patient outcomes.

Clinical trials in nephrology have focused on achieving targets, supplementing deficiencies, and correcting excesses in order to improve patient outcomes. The majority of interventions have failed to demonstrate benefit and some have caused harm. It may be that therapies aiming to 'normalize' parameters may actually disturb evolutionary adaptation, thus causing harm. By refocusing on the physiology of disease, and complexity of adaptation, we may design better trials. We review successful and unsuccessful trials in nephrology and other disciplines and suggest a set of principles by which to design future clinical trials:(1) acknowledge heterogeneity of chronic kidney disease populations and appropriately characterize populations for studies; (2) develop better validated biomarkers (through proteomics, genomics, and metabolomics) to identify responders and nonresponders to interventions; (3) design interventions that mimic physiological processes without collateral detrimental effects; (4) reconsider the status of the randomized-controlled trial as the only 'gold standard' and perform large-scale pragmatic trials comparing current care with the intervention(s) of interest, and (5) broaden nephrology research culture so that the majority of patients are enrolled into observational cohorts and intervention studies, which foster greater knowledge acquisition and dissemination. Improved understanding of pathophysiological mechanisms, in conjunction with more innovative but stringent clinical trial design, will ultimately lead to improved patient outcomes.

Clinical supervision by consultants in teaching hospitals.

Clinical supervision is a vital part of postgraduate medical education. Without it, trainees may not learn effectively from their experiences; this may lead to acceptance by registrars and junior doctors of lower standards of care. Currently, supervision is provided by consultants to registrars and junior doctors, and by registrars to junior doctors. Evidence suggests that the clinical supervision provided to postgraduate doctors is inadequate. Registrars and juniors doctors have the right to expect supervision in the workplace. Impediments to the provision of clinical supervision include competing demands of hospital service provision on trainees and supervisors, lack of clarity of job descriptions, private versus public commitments of supervisors and lack of interest. Supervisors should be trained in the process of supervision and provided with the time and resources to conduct it. Those being supervised should be provided with clear expectations of the process. We need to create and develop systems, environments and cultures that support high standards of conduct and effective clinical supervision. These systems must ensure the right to supervision, feedback, support, decent working conditions and respect for both trainees and their supervisors.

Integrated critical care: an approach to specialist cover for critical care in the rural setting.

Critical care encompasses elements of emergency medicine, anaesthesia, intensive care, acute internal medicine, postsurgical care, trauma management, and retrieval. In metropolitan teaching hospitals these elements are often distinct, with individual specialists providing discrete services. This may not be possible in rural centres, where specialist numbers are smaller and recruitment and retention more difficult. Multidisciplinary integrated critical care, using existing resources, has developed in some rural centres as a more relevant approach in this setting. The concept of developing a specialty of integrated critical-care medicine is worthy of further exploration.