External contributors – Page 262
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Comment
Michael White on the global financial crisis
By the time you read this, Labour's 2008 party conference in Manchester will be over and Gordon Brown will still be prime minister, despite whatever has happened or not in the interval.
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Comment
Noel Plumridge on a family's care crisis
On Friday morning, Mum was readmitted to hospital. She is 85 years old and vulnerable to infections, with a provisional diagnosis of leukaemia.
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Comment
Nicky Jonas on NHS volunteers abroad
Volunteering offers stressed-out NHS managers the chance to make a difference in the developing world and learn valuable new skills that can give them an edge when they return home.
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Comment
John Coakley on the quest for medical leadership
There seems to be an increasing demand for clinical, and in particular medical, leadership. Lord Darzi's next stage review recommendations and the reviews of healthcare being conducted across strategic health authorities will not work without it.
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Comment
Stephen Ramsden on harm to patients
Why is there no public outcry about the harm we cause patients in hospital? Or about the avoidable deaths that happen week in, week out?
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Comment
Jeremy Porteus on NHS networking
It was during the shoulder-padded, champers-quaffing decade of excess known as the 1980s that the term 'networking' became popular.
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on caring for the whole patient
My 75-year-old father has recently had a coronary angiogram and been referred for bypass graft surgery. When I was a cardiology senior house officer in the Jurassic period, he would never have been referred for such surgery at this age.
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Comment
Paul Dutton on failing NHS foundation trusts
The Department of Health this month issued a consultation paper that rules out insolvency for hospital trusts that are failing financially, a move that risks undermining the original concept of what foundation trusts were meant to be and achieve.
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Comment
Sandy Watson on bringing young people to the NHS table
Any talk of engaging with the community and involving patients in shaping healthcare cannot ignore the needs and influence of its youngest citizens.
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Comment
Michael White on the Liberal Democrats' conference
Apart from Norman Lamb's platform speech and a short midweek debate on the urgent needs of mental health, the health service wasn't very prominent on the Liberal Democrats' conference agenda in Bournemouth.
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Comment
Media Watch: NHS in the headlines
Headlines have been lent an oddly cinematic quality this week. In the horror category, Gordon Brown faced the 'revenge of the Blair Babes', according to The People. The Observer moved into gangster territory, imploring the prime minister to 'call off your mafioso aides'.
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Comment
Quint Studer on effective NHS leadership
Lord Darzi's bold recommendations for the NHS on its 60th anniversary have caused quite a stir in the UK and created many challenges for NHS leaders.Some of the goals set forth in the review are ambitious, but they are not insurmountable.
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Comment
Mike Hobbs on mental health discrimination
People with mental illness are subject to prejudice in our society. Although attitudes to people with anxiety and depression have improved, attitudes towards people with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia have worsened.
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Comment
Lyn Whitfield on personal medical data
Did anyone else feel a twinge of unease about the NHS's 60th anniversary celebrations? I couldn't help thinking they were very backward looking; all those 1940s-style logos and pictures of nurses holding babies in knitted cardigans.
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Comment
Alan Maynard on managing the NHS market
The Darzi reforms, like dozens of ‘definitive’ reports and structural ‘redisorganisations’ over the 60 years of the health service, are experiments that may imperil or improve the lot of patients and taxpayers.
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Comment
Maggie Rae on world class efforts
The Olympics may be behind us but the legacy of rigorous training lives on in primary care trusts across the country as they prepare for the world class commissioning competency assessment process.
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Comment
Ali Mohammed on caring for NHS staff
Having just returned from holiday, I am once again struck by how much attention goes into the little things done by industries that focus heavily on customer care.
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Comment
Neil Goodwin on chief executive boredom
I have been reflecting on my time as a chief executive, specifically that in the latter part of my career I experienced increasing periods of boredom.
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Comment
Steve Field on the case for a GP-led health service
Lord Darzi's review of the NHS advocates a healthcare system led by clinicians and centred on patients - and rightly so.
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Comment
Jo Davis on balancing an NHS board
Board dynamics are potentially the most powerful, unseen and misunderstood force influencing a trust's decision-making and strategy.