Vaccination programme under way at NGH after paediatrician is diagnosed with whooping cough:
Children’s department staff at Northampton General Hospital are being vaccinated after a doctor was diagnosed with whooping cough. Northampton Chronicle and Echo
Monday, 2 July 2012
Microsoft releases Health Choices app
Microsoft releases Health Choices app: Health Choices, a smartphone app that provides health guidance and information about NHS services has been released by Microsoft for use on Apple and Android devices. E-Health Insider
New health visiting shared learning published
New health visiting shared learning published: This case study describes a new model of community practice teacher support designed by Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust. NHS Employers
New CPD guidance for doctors
New CPD guidance for doctors: The General Medical Council (GMC) has launched new guidance to help doctors reflect on how their learning and development improves the quality of care they provide to patients. NHS Employers
CQC report shows where NHS should be looking to improve
CQC report shows where NHS should be looking to improve: NHS organisations have been provided with a useful pointer as to where they can improve said NHS Confederation deputy chief executive David Stout in response to the CQC's first market report NHS Confederation
Toward best practice in interventional radiology
Toward best practice in interventional radiology:
This document sets out case studies using service delivery models that provide benefits for patients and staff. The clinical teams have shared their learning so that their experiences may be a stimulus to others to improve local interventional radiology services.
This document sets out case studies using service delivery models that provide benefits for patients and staff. The clinical teams have shared their learning so that their experiences may be a stimulus to others to improve local interventional radiology services.
Recovery resources
Recovery resources:
This online resource has been designed to support commissioners and services in meeting the drug strategy outcomes. It features evidence and guidance; case studies of local initiatives; and links to other useful material.
This online resource has been designed to support commissioners and services in meeting the drug strategy outcomes. It features evidence and guidance; case studies of local initiatives; and links to other useful material.
Monitor not responsible for oversized PFI
Monitor not responsible for oversized PFI:
An investigation into the private finance initiative arrangement at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals Foundation Trust has published its findings.
Carried out by KPMG, the probe focused on how the trust was burdened with a large PFI agreement for a new hospital.
It found that Monitor was unable to prevent the deal but concluded the regulator could have spotted the trust’s slide into deficit earlier ... Healthcare Today
An investigation into the private finance initiative arrangement at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals Foundation Trust has published its findings.
Carried out by KPMG, the probe focused on how the trust was burdened with a large PFI agreement for a new hospital.
It found that Monitor was unable to prevent the deal but concluded the regulator could have spotted the trust’s slide into deficit earlier ... Healthcare Today
There still seems to be a gap between the rhetoric and the actual care delivery on the ground
There still seems to be a gap between the rhetoric and the actual care delivery on the ground: Jill Davies, Research Programme Manager at the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities comments on the Care Quality Commission (CQC)'s report on its inspection of learning disabilities services.
Smoking ban 'has reduced asthma and heart attacks'
Smoking ban 'has reduced asthma and heart attacks':
Prohibition of smoking in pubs and restaurants appears to have encouraged people to try to cut down
Five years after the English smoking ban drove nicotine addicts out of pubs and on to pavements, the fug-filled restaurants and bars are a hazy memory. But it is not just our clothes that smell better – evidence is accumulating to show the UK population is in better health too.
The ban did not, as opponents warned, drive people out of pubs and into their homes to smoke. If anything, the ban, which brought more awareness of the dangers of secondhand smoke to friends and family as well as a greater degree of social disapproval, appears to have encouraged people to try to cut down.
A review of the benefits by Professor Linda Bauld of Bath University, published last year, found "no significant evidence of increased smoking at home among study participants after the law was in place. In contrast, some participants increased restrictions on smoking at home."
The big worry was that an increase in smoking at home would harm children. But a study carried out in Scotland, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010, suggested their health had improved. Fewer have been admitted to hospital with asthma attacks since the Scottish ban on 26 March 2006, more than a year before its English counterpart.
The researchers looked at more than 21,000 asthma admissions between 2000 and 2009 for children under 15 years. Before the legislation, admissions among preschoolers were rising by more than 9% a year, while for older children they were stable. After the ban, they dropped by 18.4% for preschool children and 20.8% for those aged five to 14.
The authors admit they do not know if parents of the children smoked, so there is no direct link to the ban, and the admissions drop may have another cause, but they say: "We are not aware of any national educational campaigns, changes in healthcare delivery or clinical management, or changes in other exposures, such as air pollution, that coincided with the date on which the legislation was introduced."
The biggest health impact has been a drop in heart attack emergency admissions – the "Montana effect", which has since been identified in many other places that have brought in smoking bans. Helena, in Montana, introduced a smoking ban in June 2002, but it was scrapped that December. In those six months, however, researchers publishing in the British Medical Journal found a drop in heart attack admissions to hospital.
Anna Gilmore and her colleagues, at Bath's school for health, analysed heart attack hospital admissions for England between July 2002 and September 2008 and found a significant drop of 2.4% after the July 2007 ban. It was the equivalent of 1,200 fewer heart attack patients, they said in their paper in the BMJ.
It was a considerably smaller drop in admissions than that found in a study in Scotland by Jill Pell and colleagues. In her review Baud suggested that either less secondhand smoke was being inhaled in England before the ban than in Scotland, or the authors of the Scottish study did not take into account other reasons for declining coronary rates.
But overall, it is clear that smoking bans have made a difference to heart health. A Cochrane review, which scrutinised the data from 10 studies from North America, Italy and Scotland, found a drop in hospital heart attack admissions in all of them and a drop in the numbers of deaths in two.
Peers yesterday gave a second reading to a Bill proposed by Lord Ribiero, the ex-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, which would ban smoking in cars containing children, raising hopes among campaigners that it may secure enough support to pass the Lords and be discussed by MPs.
It will take many more years to find out what the effect is on preventing cancers and lung diseases, which take much longer to show up.
Robin Hewings, Cancer Research UK's tobacco control manager, said the smokefree legislation had already saved lives.
"Although we won't see a reduction in cancer rates for some years to come, the health gains that we have seen are very encouraging – such as the reduction in admissions to hospital for heart attacks. People no longer have to breathe cancer-causing chemicals from smoky air in their workplace. The law banning smoking in public places triggered around 300,000 smokers to try to kick the habit. There are now fewer public triggers that might tempt a smoker to fall off the wagon."
Hewings said the ban had changed the social norms around smoking indoors.
"Research has shown that far fewer people now allow smoking in their own homes – meaning that more children are benefiting from a smokefree environment too."
Meanwhile, according to new polling data which Cancer Research UK says shows "shocking levels of ignorance about smoking and cancer", it has emerged that fewer than one in five people realise that smoking causes many different forms of cancer. In a YouGov poll of 4,099 adults, weighted to make it representative of the UK population, only 12% knew that smoking can cause ovarian cancer, while the proportions who knew that smoking was linked to cancer of the bowel (13%), cervix (13%), kidney (15%) and liver (19%) were almost as small. However, 89% knew it can cause lung cancer. The Guardian
Five years after the English smoking ban drove nicotine addicts out of pubs and on to pavements, the fug-filled restaurants and bars are a hazy memory. But it is not just our clothes that smell better – evidence is accumulating to show the UK population is in better health too.
The ban did not, as opponents warned, drive people out of pubs and into their homes to smoke. If anything, the ban, which brought more awareness of the dangers of secondhand smoke to friends and family as well as a greater degree of social disapproval, appears to have encouraged people to try to cut down.
A review of the benefits by Professor Linda Bauld of Bath University, published last year, found "no significant evidence of increased smoking at home among study participants after the law was in place. In contrast, some participants increased restrictions on smoking at home."
The big worry was that an increase in smoking at home would harm children. But a study carried out in Scotland, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010, suggested their health had improved. Fewer have been admitted to hospital with asthma attacks since the Scottish ban on 26 March 2006, more than a year before its English counterpart.
The researchers looked at more than 21,000 asthma admissions between 2000 and 2009 for children under 15 years. Before the legislation, admissions among preschoolers were rising by more than 9% a year, while for older children they were stable. After the ban, they dropped by 18.4% for preschool children and 20.8% for those aged five to 14.
The authors admit they do not know if parents of the children smoked, so there is no direct link to the ban, and the admissions drop may have another cause, but they say: "We are not aware of any national educational campaigns, changes in healthcare delivery or clinical management, or changes in other exposures, such as air pollution, that coincided with the date on which the legislation was introduced."
The biggest health impact has been a drop in heart attack emergency admissions – the "Montana effect", which has since been identified in many other places that have brought in smoking bans. Helena, in Montana, introduced a smoking ban in June 2002, but it was scrapped that December. In those six months, however, researchers publishing in the British Medical Journal found a drop in heart attack admissions to hospital.
Anna Gilmore and her colleagues, at Bath's school for health, analysed heart attack hospital admissions for England between July 2002 and September 2008 and found a significant drop of 2.4% after the July 2007 ban. It was the equivalent of 1,200 fewer heart attack patients, they said in their paper in the BMJ.
It was a considerably smaller drop in admissions than that found in a study in Scotland by Jill Pell and colleagues. In her review Baud suggested that either less secondhand smoke was being inhaled in England before the ban than in Scotland, or the authors of the Scottish study did not take into account other reasons for declining coronary rates.
But overall, it is clear that smoking bans have made a difference to heart health. A Cochrane review, which scrutinised the data from 10 studies from North America, Italy and Scotland, found a drop in hospital heart attack admissions in all of them and a drop in the numbers of deaths in two.
Peers yesterday gave a second reading to a Bill proposed by Lord Ribiero, the ex-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, which would ban smoking in cars containing children, raising hopes among campaigners that it may secure enough support to pass the Lords and be discussed by MPs.
It will take many more years to find out what the effect is on preventing cancers and lung diseases, which take much longer to show up.
Robin Hewings, Cancer Research UK's tobacco control manager, said the smokefree legislation had already saved lives.
"Although we won't see a reduction in cancer rates for some years to come, the health gains that we have seen are very encouraging – such as the reduction in admissions to hospital for heart attacks. People no longer have to breathe cancer-causing chemicals from smoky air in their workplace. The law banning smoking in public places triggered around 300,000 smokers to try to kick the habit. There are now fewer public triggers that might tempt a smoker to fall off the wagon."
Hewings said the ban had changed the social norms around smoking indoors.
"Research has shown that far fewer people now allow smoking in their own homes – meaning that more children are benefiting from a smokefree environment too."
Meanwhile, according to new polling data which Cancer Research UK says shows "shocking levels of ignorance about smoking and cancer", it has emerged that fewer than one in five people realise that smoking causes many different forms of cancer. In a YouGov poll of 4,099 adults, weighted to make it representative of the UK population, only 12% knew that smoking can cause ovarian cancer, while the proportions who knew that smoking was linked to cancer of the bowel (13%), cervix (13%), kidney (15%) and liver (19%) were almost as small. However, 89% knew it can cause lung cancer. The Guardian
Hospital closures inevitable and NHS operation rationing will continue, warns think-tank
Hospital closures inevitable and NHS operation rationing will continue, warns think-tank: NHS patients should expect continued rationing of common operations for years to come, while hospital closures are "inevitable", according to influential think tank The King's Fund
. The Daily Telegraph
. The Daily Telegraph
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