Dying doctor's 'Hello, my name is...' Twitter campaign wins support from Northamptonshire hospital staff

Dying doctor's 'Hello, my name is...' Twitter campaign wins support from Northamptonshire hospital staff A social-media campaign by a terminally ill doctor to encourage hospital staff to introduce themselves to patients is being supported by more than 90 NHS organisations, including one from Northamptonshire.

The ‘Hello my name is…’ campaign has been spearheaded by Dr Kate Granger, who is a young hospital consultant who became frustrated with the number of staff who failed to introduce themselves to her when she was in hospital.

The 31-year-old, who has terminal cancer, has now made it her mission in whatever time she has left to get as many hospital staff as possible pledging to introduce themselves to patients.

Ninety NHS organisations are now backing her campaign, including Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Northants Herald and Post

See also:

• #hellomynameis Twitter
• Dr Kate Granger's 'Hello, my name is...' campaign backed by 400000 NHS staff The Daily Telegraph
• Profile: Dr Kate Granger, hospital consultant The Independent
• I want my legacy to be that the NHS treats all patients with compassion The Guardian
• #hellomynameis: a doctor on why a friendly greeting is crucial to care – video The Guardian
• Compassion in care campaign hits new milestone NHS England
• News: Trust Supports The ‘Hello My Name Is…’ Campaign Northamptonshire Healthcare

Language controls for nurses, midwives, dentists, dental care professionals, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians: government response

Language controls for nurses, midwives, dentists, dental care professionals, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians: government response This document outlines the government response to a consultation on changes to allow professional regulatory bodies to impose language controls on nursing, dental and pharmacy professionals. The vast majority of the 71 responses received support proposals to allow these regulators the power to apply language controls, where appropriate, to healthcare professionals, to ensure they have a sufficient knowledge of the English language to practise safely in the UK. Department of Health

• Government response
• Original consultation
• DH news

'Radical change' needed for NHS

'Radical change' needed for NHS MPs say radical change is needed to make the NHS in England financially sustainable. BBC News

See also:

• Financial sustainability of NHS Bodies Public Accounts Committee

Scientists on target with dementia cure or drug

Scientists on target with dementia cure or drug Scientists are on target to develop a cure for dementia within the next 10 years, Alistair Burns, NHS England’s national clinical director for dementia has said.

He says he is confident there will be a cure for dementia, or at least a drug that will significantly slow down its progression, by 2025.

Professor Burns, 56, who was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list, claims that advances in treatment will eventually catch up with those made in cancer care.

More people are already being diagnosed with the illness, with an extra 10,000 people every month being added to the dementia register.

“I think in my generation, and the aspiration is that by 2020 or 2025, we will find a treatment for dementia, or at least the commonest cause of dementia, which is Alzheimer’s disease, or something that will significantly slow down the progression of the illness,” Professor Burns said.

A&E struggles with elderly patients

A&E struggles with elderly patients BBC's Panorama spends a week with one emergency department. BBC News

UK health worker tested for Ebola

UK health worker tested for Ebola UK military healthcare worker flown back to London following "likely exposure" to Ebola virus in Sierra Leone. BBC News

See also:

• VIDEO: How will Ebola vaccine trial work? BBC News
• Press release: Second healthcare worker transported to UK for Ebola monitoring Public Health England
• New Ebola scare as second military healthcare worker is flown back to England after suspected needle injury while treating victims in Sierra Leone The Daily Mail

Is asthma being overdiagnosed?

Is asthma being overdiagnosed? A potentially alarming figure that emerged in the UK news last week was that “1 million” UK adults may have been wrongly diagnosed with asthma – a claim reported in various forms by BBC News, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror and the Mail Online.

The headlines followed the publication of new draft guideline (PDF, 670kb) from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the diagnosis and management of asthma. Most of the media articles were true to the facts and explained that the guideline was aiming to improve asthma care by improving the accuracy of diagnosis.

So, where did the figure of 1 million come from? All the UK press rallied round a statement in the draft guideline that said: “studies of adults diagnosed with asthma suggest that up to 30% do not have clear evidence of asthma”. What followed was clearly a “back of the envelope” calculation extrapolating this to the number of people receiving treatment for asthma in the UK, which is around 4.1 million. This gave the magic figure of 1.23 million potentially misdiagnosed people.

Unfortunately, the 30% figure in the draft guideline is not referenced, so we can’t find out how accurate it is. We also don’t know whether it applies to specific asthma subgroups, such as those of a specific age, or the severity of a person's symptoms. This makes it difficult to assess whether this calculation is accurate, or even reasonable.

GP practices across UK face compulsory data protection audits

GP practices across UK face compulsory data protection audits GP practices face compulsory audits from this month by the information commissioner to check their compliance with data protection laws, and could be fined heavily if they are found to have breached rules. GP Online

Four out of five NHS trusts providing acute hospital care report deficit

Four out of five NHS trusts providing acute hospital care report deficit Figure emerges in report into NHS finances warning that measures to ease pressure on A&E departments are not working

Four out of five foundation trusts involved in the provision of acute hospital services were reporting a deficit by last autumn, the public accounts committee has disclosed.

The figure has emerged in a report into NHS finances which has warned that measures to ease pressure on accident and emergency departments are not working. Continue reading... The Guardian

See also:

• NHS paying locum doctors £1,760 a day to cover chronic staff shortages The Guardian