External contributors – Page 252
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CommentAngela Greatley on the Mental Health Act
From 3 November, most parts of the long-awaited and often feared 2007 Mental Health Act will be implemented. For the NHS, the new act presents major challenges by extending the scope of compulsory powers and by creating some new safeguards for those subject to them.
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Michael Marmot on eliminating social injustice in health
Glasgow had a little more publicity than it might have welcomed when the report of the World Health Organisation's commission on social determinants of health, which I chaired, was published in August.
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Your Humble Servant on foundation trusts
To: Don Wise, chief executiveFrom: Paul Servant, assistant chief executiveRe: Money, Money, Monitor
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Media Watch: healthcare reviews
Unlike certain colleagues, health secretary Alan Johnson has never been invited onto a billionaire's gin palace. 'Trawlers occasionally, but never yachts,' he told The Daily Telegraph.
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Michael White on pharmaceutical price regulation
I am indebted to Fred Curzon, 7th Earl Howe and veteran Tory health spokesman in the Lords, for a little gem of a debate in the upper house the other evening. It was doubtless neglected because of the Yachtgate affair in Corfu and relative trivia like the global financial collapse.
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Kevin Fickenscher on robotics and patient care
Robotics in healthcare is revolutionising the way medical personnel work together and how patients are treated.
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Richard Knowles on NHS command and control
Command and control is a term that is increasingly used in the current target-driven healthcare climate.
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Mark Goldman on a happy ending for NHS top-ups
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin. Once upon a time there was an elusive apostrophe. He lived in the NHS and was always causing mischief with his friend 'patients'. Together they would hide from the managers and clinicians.
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Ruth Thorlby on the price of healthcare in the US
For a new arrival to the US, embarking on the Health Foundation's Harkness Fellowship in New York, it is hard to take in the full litany of facts about the 46 million Americans with no health insurance.
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Neil Goodwin on charismatic leadership
Leadership was ever present during a recent vacation in New England. There was, of course, the national presidential election and the administration's financial bailout debacle, which The New York Times summarised as an absence of national leadership.
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Ron Newall on patient and public involvement
There has never been a better time for patients and the public to become involved in decision-making for healthcare services - although some cynics might disagree.
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Media Watch: patient referrals
A US pilot sent to shoot down a UFO on a dark night in East Anglia some 50 years ago only to find nothing but, well, dark night, recalled in Monday's Guardian that it 'was like being a one-legged man sent into an ass-kicking contest'.
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Nigel Edwards on NHS exceptional case panels
Over the summer no media report on the state of the NHS was complete without mention of the postcode lottery in treatments, either through challenges to primary care trust exceptional case panels or the perceived ethics of the current rules on top-ups.
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Michael White on keeping patients out of hospital
It is not often you read of a new controversy in the Sunday papers and stumble on what looks like the answer in Hansard before bedtime. It happened this week. Here goes.
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Henry Carleton on the European working time directive
The chair of the British Medical Association consultants' committee recently suggested that the problems posed by the European working time directive could be solved by employing more consultants and ensuring managers work closely with clinical colleagues.
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David Levy on world class commissioning's training implications
World class commissioning has already had a significant impact on primary care trusts and their development.
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Protecting patients' mealtimes
Around 28 per cent of patients in hospital are considered at risk of malnutrition, and the risk is most pronounced in elderly patients with declining mental function. Kathie Paling explains how a Royal College of Nursing leadership programme helped her improve the nutritional status of patients on her ward
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David Amos on aiming for NHS perfection
The 2008 Olympics reaffirmed the proposition that it is possible to keep improving on excellence and perfection in sport.
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Lisa Rodrigues on the financial crisis and the NHS
We live in strange and worrying times. As I write, another building society has been nationalised.
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Helen Bevan on large-scale change in the health service
A sea change is happening in the way we approach large-scale change in the health service.