Evidence Based Medicine
“The SAFE study was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. SAFE was a large clinical trial comparing albumin and saline for resuscitation of intensive care patients in Australia and New Zealand. SAFE found no difference in mortality between the two groups.
The SAFE study had many features which caused readers to consider it of high quality and for clinicians to believe that the findings were likely correct.
What features must you look for in the DESIGN of ANY clinical trial to determine whether you should accept the results as correct and apply them to your patients?”
Areas covered poorly included concealment, blinding, baseline risk for sample size calculation, and adjustment for baseline variables.
Thirteen out of sixteen candidates passed this section.
Disclaimer: the viva stem above may be an original CICM stem, acquired from their publicly available past papers. Or, perhaps it is a slightly altered version of the original CICM stem. Or, it is a completely original viva stem, concocted by the monstrously amoral author of Deranged Physiology for nothing more than his own personal amusement. In either case, because the college do not make the main viva text or marking criteria available, almost everything here has been confabulated. It might sound like a plausible viva and it could be used for the purpose of practice, but all should be aware that it does not represent the "true" canonical CICM viva station.