Comment archive – Page 407
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Doubts over super-regulator
You do not mention an important question for the new super-regulator, writes Don Redding. Will it exist to serve patients and service users, and if so, how will it engage with them?
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Malcolm Lowe-Lauri on the role of FT governors
Foundation trust governors can and should exercise their influence in the wider community to benefit service users
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Your Humble Servant: carry on nurses
To: Don Wise, chief executiveFrom: Paul Servant, assistant chief executiveRe: Ooh you are awful, but I like you
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Gill Morgan's great legacy
When we appointed Gill Morgan as chief executive of the NHS Confederation, we knew we were recruiting a very competent person - but we had no idea how widely valued and supremely effective she would become, writes Dianne Jeffrey
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TV chaplains skew reality
A recent episode of Holby City showed a chaplain - described as a 'lay reader' from the so-called Holby Christian Fellowship - visiting a patient.
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Tackling violence
Despite the lack of a national standardised training scheme for dealing with violent patients, there are developments taking place in managing violence, writes Rob Grant
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GP hours - what a mess
Well, well, well. What a shock the National Audit Office has stated that GPs earn lots more money for working fewer hours. This is something that has been widely known for some time, writes Les Collister
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Political opening hours
As a medical student, I sat in on GP clinics and recall whole mornings with patients seeing their charming GP, chatting, then leaving the room reassured but without a new diagnosis or treatment, writes Jake Low-Beer
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Media Watch: drug maker under scrutiny
Being accused of 'cheating the NHS' is enough to give anyone heartburn. So bosses at Reckitt Benckiser, makers of indigestion treatment Gaviscon, may well have sought comfort with a taste of their own medicine this week.
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Guarantees are vital to ISTC success
Your piece on independent sector treatment centres, 'ISTC contract guarantees will saddle NHS with £187m bill', misses some fundamental points, writes David Worskett
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Use it or lose it: freedom from Whitehall is a two-way street
At last week's Primary Care Trust Network conference, the discussion with NHS chief executive David Nicholson revealed how hard it is for the centre to let go - especially when local health services won't release their grip on the Department of Health's hand.
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PCT rebrand will help end identity crisis
Public sector rebranding exercises are often seen as a costly and pointless distraction. But the proposal to rebrand primary care trusts - so Oldham PCT would become NHS Oldham, for example - makes a great deal of sense and does not need to cost money.
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Michael White on Darling's budget
By the time you read this, Alistair Darling's first Budget will have reinforced Gordon Brown's latest promise to make our great public services more competitive and accountable to their customers. They are all Blairites now.
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AIDS: getting the word out to diverse communities
Educating immigrant groups about the AIDS epidemic in the UK must be treated as a key public health priority, as Hazel Barrett explains
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All Our Yesterdays
March 19, 1948, Public Assistance Journal and Health & Hospital ReviewJobs advertised this week: A resident nurse (female), who should be aged about 45 to 50, was required in an almshouse for men at Trinity Hospital, Greenwich. Applicants should have experience in home nursing and be used to treating elderly ...
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13 minutes to answer the phone? Life in the DH press office.
The Department of Health press office was mysteriously not answering the phones the day the BMA revealed that 92 per cent of GPs had voted in favour of the directed enhanced service on extended hours. It took HSJ journalists a bind boggling 13 minutes to get through. Perhaps they were ...
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Andrew Jones on extending primary care
As I opened the envelope from the British Medical Association, I found myself reflecting on a tumultuous few months. The envelope in question contained a justification of the GPs' committee's negotiating stance on extended hours and a form for voting on enhanced payments options.
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Noel Plumridge on topping up NHS care
It is a long time since NHS care was unequivocally free. Over half a century ago, in the final days of a post-war Labour government that was proud to nationalise not just healthcare but the 'commanding heights' of the British economy - coal, steel, the railways - a certain outspoken ...
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Emma Dent on having a drink
As I believe I have written here before, I have thought for some time that I would make a lousy alcoholic because I get terrible hangovers. Just thinking about my top five worst-ever mornings-after of all time makes me feel queasy.
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Media Watch: nurses under attack
It seems it's fine to rant about lazy, greedy doctors, but dare to criticise nurses and all hell breaks loose.