Realistic Medicine: Changing culture and practice in the delivery of health and social care.

Objective: Current models of health and social care services are stretched and do not always suit patients, their carers or the aspirations of the workforce. Realistic Medicine aims to improve patient care by ensuring that people receive appropriate, beneficial, evidence-based care aligned with their personal preferences. This paper builds on a keynote address delivered at ICCH 2018.

Subcutaneous magnesium in the advanced cancer setting.

Hypomagnesaemia can arise from a variety of causes but is particularly prevalent in cancer populations. This case report describes a patient with recurrent symptomatic hypomagnesaemia, on the background of advanced ovarian cancer and a high-output ileostomy, who was successfully managed on a daily continuous subcutaneous infusion of magnesium via a syringe pump. There is limited published information on the subcutaneous administration of magnesium and, to our knowledge, this is the first case to report its routine delivery over 24 hours in a syringe pump.