A nice paper that’s well worth reading, A ‘healthy’ reminder about what actually matters. Healthcare doesn’t figure that highly when rural dwellers consider health. Place is much more important, both the geographic and the social. There are no prizes for guessing the community!

This paper performed serial surveys in general practices across 4 countries and demonstrates something that many of us intuitively know – rural general practice is different: adaptable and resilient – in response to COVID-19 anyway. We agree with Kyle and his team that further efforts are required to define and understand NZ rural general practice – and would extend that to include all rural health providers.

Background: Measurements of creatinine and glucose on the i-STAT point-of-care testing (POCT) device are known to be elevated in the presence of hydroxyurea. This interference can lead to differences between creatinine and glucose results reported from the i-STAT and samples analyzed with other methods. We sought to characterize the extent of this interference and to compare results with the epoc, a POCT device similar to the i-STAT.

This is a RNZ podcast with Dr Anna Rolleston (University of Auckland) about inequities in heart health for Māori and Pacific people and some of the factors that need to be taken into account when doing research with Māori.