External contributors – Page 307
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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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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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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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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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Your Humble Servant: a primary care-bled NHS
‘Life carries on without GPs. In fact it’s a lot simpler’
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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Media Watch: working for free
One test of a story's likely impact on the public is the range of newspapers that run it. On that basis, the story at the weekend that nurses, doctors and other staff at a Kent acute trust have been asked to do a day's work for no pay pretty much ...
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Michael White on the 'demise' of nursing
Sometimes the political weather seems to follow the climatic version. So it was no surprise during the snow to read a mild-mannered press release about training patterns under the lurid headline that we face 'the demise of nursing' in Britain.
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Media Watch: Patricia Hewitt
'Hewitt should back off', moaned The Daily Express. Most newspapers reacted with some contempt to the health secretary's statement that it is 'best practice' for doctors to order individuals to lose weight or give up cigarettes before they are treated.
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Simon Stevens on five ideas to innovate
Fly-on-the-wall documentaries typically only benefit the fly. This is a truth probably now held to be self evident at Rotherham foundation trust. But, if one of the things to take away from the BBC programme Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS? was that ideally there would be more local initiative ...