Case reports

Have you ever attended a patient and afterwards, thought, ‘Wow, that was an interesting case!’? Sometimes called the ‘eyewitness reports’ of healthcare research, case reports are a detailed, retrospective description of a patient encounter. They are shared by way of publication in scholarly journals and provide an opportunity for clinicians to widely share their experiences. They are important to the generation of new knowledge, the detection of new issues, and the description of unusual or novel treatments, and they can illustrate previously undocumented rare situations, among other important functions (Pearce and Simpson, 2019). They are especially useful in the rapidly evolving world of paramedicine, where learning from a patient encounter can be promulgated around the world, potentially improving clinical practice and patient outcomes far and wide.