The publications wall
A look inside the Brisbane office, and at the wall where the published papers are displayed.
Where it started
The first of them is a paper from 1994 on the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia, co-authored with the neurosurgeon Dr Lee Atkinson. Trigeminal neuralgia is a condition causing severe facial pain, and some distance from shoulder surgery, which is a reasonable illustration of how a research career tends to begin wherever the opportunity happens to arise.
That first paper led on to nearly 40 peer-reviewed papers since.
What peer-reviewed means
A peer-reviewed paper is one that has been read before publication by other researchers working in the same field, usually without the authors knowing who they are. Those reviewers assess whether the question is worth asking, whether the method used can actually answer it, whether the numbers have been handled properly, and whether the conclusions go further than the data allow. Papers are frequently rejected, or sent back for substantial revision more than once. The process is slow and imperfect, and it remains the main filter standing between a piece of work and the body of published literature that clinicians draw on.
Why keep publishing
Clinical practice and research feed each other. Questions that come up in theatre are the ones worth studying, and the answers change what is done in theatre afterwards. The alternative, continuing to do things a particular way because that is how they have always been done, is how practice falls behind.
How a paper becomes practice
A single study rarely changes anything on its own. Findings have to be repeated by other groups, pooled with similar studies, and weighed against registry data that follows large numbers of patients over years before a technique becomes accepted. A paper describing a new method is the beginning of that process rather than the end of it, which is also why surgeons read and review well beyond the work they publish themselves.
Watch the video
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