Citation
Thorp, John M., Jr. (2018). BJOG Editor's Choice: Wooden Spoons and Thromboprophylaxis in Obstetrics.
BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 125(9), 1049.
Abstract
The wooden spoon was a booby prize given to the lowest scoring student in mathematics at the University of Cambridge up until 1909, signifying that the student had more potential as a cook than a scholar. Archie Cochrane reinvented this dubious honour in 1979, awarding the utensil to the field of obstetrics as a whole. His reasoning was that our specialty brought up the rear in terms of using insights from randomised controlled trials before embarking on wide-scale interventions in clinical care. Shamed by his critique and energised by his colleagues, obstetrics verbally embraced evidence-based medicine and, over the next 40 years, worked to test longstanding interventions, and not adopt new ones without randomised trials demonstrating effectiveness.
URL
https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0528.14886Reference Type
Journal Article
Year Published
2018
Journal Title
BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Author(s)
Thorp, John M., Jr.
ORCiD
Thorp - 0000-0002-9307-6690
