Comment archive – Page 360
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LeaderIrrational optimism is the best prescription for NHS managers
Monitor’s outgoing executive chair Bill Moyes delivered a typically pugnacious valedictory address.
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LeaderUnions and NHS employers team up to negotiate for a better future
A tough year has ended with news that is no less painful for being inevitable - there are likely to be thousands of job losses in 2010. But despite the implosion of public finances the omens are not all bad.
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CommentPete Mason on multiple leadership styles
What makes a good leader? There are several schools of thought. Should a leader be reserved like Gordon Brown, or gregarious like Tony Blair; quietly dignified like Bobby Moore, or in your face like John Terry; boisterous like Alan Sugar, or overfamiliar like David Brent?
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LeaderPopulist blame culture stifles openness
The introduction of mandatory safety breach reporting has superficial voter appeal, but problems lurk beneath.
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LeaderNHS regulatory turmoil distracts from the real business of care
Regulation has become politically dangerous territory for health secretary Andy Burnham. Just at the moment when the recent furore over death rates and patient safety has shaken public confidence in the NHS, the two regulators at the centre of the storm are about to be left leaderless.
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CommentYour Humble Servant: regulation...
‘What’s important is that if you’re crap you own up and if you’re fabulous you live to fail another day’
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Comment'You don't have to be insensitive to work here, but it helps'
New Horizons, launched on Monday, got a pleasing amount of coverage for a mental health story.
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CommentMichael White on NHS regulation
Is there enough real news to fill all those newspapers and dedicated TV news channels? In most years there are only two or three serious news items, ones that will be remembered, I sometimes joke.
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CommentStephen Eames on quality vs cost
One thing I have learnt over the years is the propensity of strategic development, planning and associated processes to dominate and consume inordinate amounts of time, often with limited output.
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CommentAngela Greatley: mental health services are moving on
The asylums have long since closed - we need to maintain the pressure for better care so people with mental health problems can lead productive, positive lives
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CommentHow to develop professional networks
Many who feel their career or performance is faltering are sometimes wary of networking. For the more introverted, networking is daunting. For others it conjures up images of currying favour along corridors of power for personal gain and so is unacceptable.
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CommentTarget inequalities, beat cancer
The government must act now to stamp out staggering inequalities in cancer care. Its first steps should be a one year survival target and changing how NICE works, writes John Baron
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CommentCally Bann: the 'finance committee'
Some may call it the finance committee. I call it a three hour filibuster on how to avoid being named and shamed by Spiky Mikey O’Brien, with perhaps 10 minutes on our plans to take 7 per cent out of the cost base.
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LeaderSuccessful trusts must not let their stories be overshadowed
The past week has seen the NHS endure its worst reputational battering since the Mid Staffordshire scandal in March.
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CommentAre death rates fair? You decide
Drip, drip, drip. No, not the sound of a hospital “deep clean” in action, but the horror-on-horror, day-by-day reporting in the run-up to and wake of the publication of Dr Foster’s annual Hospital Guide.
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CommentMichael White: shamed FTs, Dr Foster, cancer care
Where to start this week? Named and shamed foundation trusts, many of which deny alarming allegations levelled by Dr Foster? Or the news from cancer tsar Mike Richards that late diagnosis kills twice as many Britons as we thought?
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CommentNoel Plumridge on cutting the NHS cost base
The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines displacement activity as “the performance by an animal of an act inappropriate for the stimulus or stimuli that evoked it.
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CommentSteve Preston on understanding your skills
Analyse and review your skills to establish which ones are transferable.
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CommentNick Bosanquet: history offers the NHS survival skills
As rising costs and a tidal wave of public expectations push the NHS towards a new funding crisis, managers would do well to study the lessons history offers
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LeaderNHS boards are still not getting the message
The latest Dr Foster Intelligence analysis of trusts’ mortality rates contains both good and baffling news.