Time to stop sniffing the air: snapshot survey.

Objective: To determine whether the phrase "sniffing the morning air" is useful in positioning patients for tracheal intubation.

Design: Snapshot survey.

Setting: Teaching hospital.

From Shakespeare to Star Trek and beyond: a Medline search for literary and other allusions in biomedical titles.

Objectives: To document biomedical paper titles containing literary and other allusions.

Design: Retrospective survey.

Setting: Medline (1951 to mid-2005) through Dialog Datastar.

Clinical governance: vision or mirage?

Clinical governance was intended to ensure clinical quality in the National Health Service. Its first full description, in the British Medical Journal in 1998, seemed to some to be more rhetoric than substance. Now, 3 years on, its proponents believe it is starting to achieve its purpose.