Views differ on whether relatives should be present during testing for brain stem death. On p 1505 Pugh et al describe their survey of practice in 28 UK neurotrauma intensive care units. Just under half the respondents said they'd be willing to have relatives present if explanation and support was available to the relatives. Patients, GPs, and nurses dislike self management plans for asthma Self management plans are widely advocated to help patients manage their own asthma. The plans have been shown to produce improvements in health outcomes, but they have been difficult to implement in primary care.
Nothing is known about the views of patients.
Neither the patients nor the health professionals thought that self management plans were useful, although their reasons for this view differed. Patient centred plans that acknowledge patients' reluctance to see asthma as a chronic disease may be more successful. Quality of web based information on depression is poor Consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for information about medical treatment. Griffiths and Christensen found that, when judged against evidence based guidelines, the quality of information on the web was generally poor but that sites owned by organisations and those using an editorial board provided the best information about depression. The authors conclude that their methodology could be used in future studies of website quality.