Latest news – Page 2845
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Key Points
Managers interviewed in hospital trusts, health authorities and regional offices believed performance indicators to be broadly helpful. But our study found evidence that the role of the current performance indicators is distinctly limited.
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Council of optimism
Social workers are long overdue for regulation by a statutory body. But, as Lynn Eaton reports, care workers in residential and nursing homes may still slip through the net
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Cause for complaint
'This year's report makes depressing reading: not only is the volume of complaints rising inexorably - not in itself a bad thing - but the ability of the NHS to deal with them seems not to improve'
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Doctors' orders?
Few organisations of standing within the NHS would have the brass neck to issue ultimatums to government. And perhaps only one would do so in near complete self-confidence that its two-week deadline would be met. Step forward the British Medical Association (see News, page 7).
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'SAVE BART'S' PETITION WAS DONE BY THE BOOK
How odd that NHS chief executive Alan Langlands has not woken up to the desperate plight of old and sick people in London, and realised, as health secretary Frank Dobson has, that Bart's has enormous support because it is sorely needed (Monitor, 23 April).
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JOB DESCRIPTION PUZZLE
As someone who gets paid to do a job, and gets to work thanks to a train-driving professional, I am puzzled by the term 'health professionals', which I frequently see in your pages.
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HOW CAN NACGP KNOW WHAT WE'VE SAID IF IT HASN'T BOTHERED TO LISTEN?
I was most surprised to read in your report about the creation of a new primary care organisation, the National Association of Primary Care, that Andrew Willis of the National Association of Commissioning GPs said it had not been possible to agree principles between his organisation, NAFP and the Association ...
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ALL TOGETHER NOW... 'YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT 'TIL IT'S GONE'
The letter from Carole Rawlinson and John Kelly (30 April) advising NHS managers to hold their horses on closures of community hospitals should have received star billing. The logic of their research-based argument is impeccable.
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PROOF THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS LISTENING TO GRASS-ROOTS ON MENTAL HEALTH
The latest leaked mental health strategy continues to whet the appetite (News Focus, page 11, 30 April). Prioritising both intensive health-based services (assertive outreach and 24-hour nursed beds) and social care (supported housing, meaningful occupations) reflects a growing consensus on what a comprehensive locally based service should look like.
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PUBLIC AND MEDIA HYSTERIA PUTS MORE PEOPLE AT RISK OF HIV THAN ANYONE WHO IS HIV-POSITIVE
HIV voluntary organisations are sometimes asked why we keep going on about HIV. Isn't it all over? Haven't we been to the top of the hill and down again?
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CHANGE MUST COME, AND THE SOONER THE BETTER
The merger of acute and community trusts, the closure of 'cottage hospitals', the rights of healthcare 'consumers', and fears about primary care groups going the way of US managed care are all very closely linked to the thorny issue of accountability within the system for the integrated delivery of a ...
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QUERIES: JOINT WORKING, PLANNING, MENTAL HEALTH
I have recently been given the opportunity to act as elderly day care liaison nurse between day care services from health and social services. The people I will be involved with are over 65 and have a diagnosis of dementia.
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Magnetic attraction to nurses
One great story about Florence Nightingale is rarely told. It describes how the forthright Florence refused to work unless she was given control over the whole environment in which patients were nursed. She was confident they would get better more quickly if nurses were put in charge of their care. ...
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The People's Dobbo takes on the fat cats BY MICHAEL WHITE
By happy coincidence Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the grocery tycoon, chose to announce his imminent retirement from the board of the family firm in the very week that 'fat cat' rhetoric resurfaced in our great national press and, heaven help us, in the vocabulary of our great NHS as well.
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Monitor
First, his boss, Tony Blair, signalled he would like to see the health secretary enter the race to become mayor of London. Now other colleagues have followed suit. A poll of Labour MPs by market research group Opinion Leader Research found Dobbo to be the top choice among those mooted ...
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Meet the Aerospace Medical Association.
You've read all those stories about how, while 30,000ft up in a jumbo jet, a GP armed only with a small item of cutlery and a miniature bottle of whisky with which to sterilise it performs life-saving surgery on the pilot, allowing him to land the plane safely. Now meet ...