Education Research: Changing practice: Residents' adoption of the atraumatic lumbar puncture needle

Abstract

highlighted the scarcity of neurology and neuroscience education in most countries of subSaharan Africa. African medical students, medical residents, and staff physicians need both bedside teaching and didactic education in clinical neurology to acquire the basic skills required to care for their neurologic patients. I have been teaching neurology on the inpatient ward of Mulago Hospital, the national referral hospital of Uganda, twice yearly for the past 4 years. I am always impressed and encouraged by the enthusiasm of the Ugandan students and residents for learning neurology during my visits. More support from leading neurology organizations and societies is needed to improve neurology training at medical schools in sub-Saharan Africa and other resourceconstrained regions of the world.Author Response: Johan A. Aarli, Bergen, Norway; Oded Abramsky, Jerusalem: We agree with Dr. Chin that more information from leading medical schools in sub-Saharan Africa is needed to scale up clinical training in neurology. We were impressed and encouraged by the students' enthusiasm when we conducted clinical training. The key problem is the inconsistent neuroscience curricula. The World Federation of Neurology and regional neurology associations must be more active in establishing training programs in neurology at their medical schools.

Consensus guidelines for lumbar puncture in patients with neurological diseases

“…Three “statement” articles pointed out that atraumatic needles with a small-bore diameter (≥24G) are not often used in practice although literature often recommend using this type of needle [11] , [12] , [13] . Three of the seven comments had no recommendation [14] , [15] , [16] , two agreed with the original article which recommended atraumatic needles [17] , [18] , one article agreed on small-bore needles [19] , and one article recommended small-bore atraumatic needles [20] . In total, 53 fulfilled our criteria and were subdivided into three groups.…”