Comment archive – Page 435
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Comment
Pay and workforce: GP contract delay is the first staff salvo
The government will still be desperate not to see another staff group set itself against reform, particularly given the crucial role primary care will play
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Comment
Pay and workforce strategy 2008-11
There is currently great confusion among hospital doctors as to how best to respond to the many changes in employment conditions that are affecting our working conditions
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Comment
Chris Rudge on why the NHS needs to raise its game on transplants
'The NHS is spending nearly £190m a year on dialysis for the 6,278 patients waiting for a kidney transplant. If every one of these patients currently had a functioning transplant, the annual saving would be £160m'
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Comment
Information for GPs and search engines
Conservative MP Grant Shapps' 'Name and Shame' website is the latest publicity stunt to put patient appointment targets back into the headlines. While political parties continue to wrangle with one another, GPs must continue to run their practices under the significant pressure placed on them by these targets.
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Comment
NHS complaints
I read David Peat's article on lost baggage and fielding complaints with great interest. His comments in the penultimate paragraph are particularly encouraging.
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Comment
David Woodhead on lessons from Peru
'I met a group of local women who were trained in contraception and hygiene; they each had trained six women, who in turn were training others. The process had increased their confidence. And in the basement was a co-operative bakery which provided affordable bread but also made a profit.'
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Comment
HR managers must forge new staff model
The pay and workforce draft strategy documents seen by HSJpaint a picture of just how demanding 2007 will be for the human resources profession.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: a primary care-bled NHS
‘Life carries on without GPs. In fact it’s a lot simpler’
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Comment
David Peat on lost baggage and fielding complaints
'I always try to acknowledge a complaint myself when it arrives on our doorstep, and I always sign off our response. It helps me keep in touch with patients' perceptions - their sense of grievance, injustice or perplexity.'
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Comment
Martin Pearson on warm glows and icy winds
'Directors and managers of today's organisations need to recognise that they are there not only to create cost-efficient and financially successful health businesses but also to lead services in a way that saves the world from further degradation and climate chaos'
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Comment
Ministerial support and local MPs
So the Home Secretary, Labour Party Chairman and Labour Chief Whip are all campaigning against the implementation of NHS policy in their constituencies. Hazel Blears will be able to give the threatened maternity unit in Salford meaningful and persuasive support, in due course, through Patricia Hewitt.
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Comment
Michael White on politics
'I do not think the Walsall trio, all nice chaps, will mind if I describe them as the Old Codgers, rather than the Three Musketeers'
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Comment
Media watch
The paper suggested that any 'sentient being' would be so aghast at the details of the Cornwall report that they would immediately want to turn to the sports pages
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Comment
Michael White on the Mental Health Bill
If the purpose of the bill is to improve supervised community treatment and to strengthen protection of the public where there is risk of violence, then vulnerable people must surely be encouraged to seek help - not to hide themselves away.
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Comment
Michael White on policy leaks
You can imagine my distress on returning from foreign parts to discover that things have been going on in the political health arena behind my back, much of it driven by a succession of top-level leaks to this very magazine.
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Comment
Media Watch: public health pay-off
'Outrage at hospital trust's pay-off after spat' said The Sun, as it revealed 'debt-ridden' Eastbourne Downs primary care trust had paid off its former public health director to the tune of £250,000 after a 'spat' with a colleague.
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Comment
Michael white on patient involvement
Some weeks ago a Labour MP, Patrick Hall, kindly invited me to a reception on the terrace of the House of Commons. Arriving late, I stood among the dissidents at the back as health minister Rosie Winterton explained her views on patient and public involvement in the NHS.
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Comment
Media Watch: earnings cap
So ministers have 'blundered' again, according to London's Evening Standard. This time it is because they have failed to cap doctors' earnings.
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Comment
Michael White on hospital infections
HSJ's January scoop about the enduring problems with MRSA and Clostridium difficile yielded parliamentary fruit the other day in the shape of a Tory-initiated Commons debate in which this magazine received generous publicity. Excellent.