Wednesday 1 July 2015

Special care baby unit at Northampton General Hospital to be temporarily moved for improvement works

Special care baby unit at Northampton General Hospital to be temporarily moved for improvement works The special care baby unit at Northampton General Hospital will be moved to a nearby ward for the remainder of the summer. Northampton Chronicle and Echo

NHS appoints new chief executive at Northamptonshire healthcare commissioning organisation

NHS appoints new chief executive at Northamptonshire healthcare commissioning organisation The organisation that manages the healthcare budget for much of Northamptonshire has appointed a new chief executive. Northampton Chronicle and Echo

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New NHS safe staffing framework for mental health wards published

New NHS safe staffing framework for mental health wards published NHS England has launched a new practical guide to help ensure the right people with the right skills are recruited into the right inpatient mental health settings.

The Mental Health Staffing Framework, which focuses on inpatient care, was commissioned as part of the NHS England’s ‘Compassion in Practice programme’. It was developed by an independent group of directors of nursing who undertook a rigorous review of the available evidence and drew on their extensive experience.

Amongst its objectives is to equip mental health leaders with the skills and knowledge to plan and deliver safe staffing, it will also provide a means of assessing their services against agreed best practice.

Jane Cummings, Chief Nursing Officer for England, said: “There is a clear absence of best practice guidance available for mental health staffing at the moment, which is why this newly developed framework is so important.

“Staffing requirements for mental health wards are completely different to a regular inpatient ward. The focus is obviously more on psychological than physical care, but reactive and unplanned interventions are also more common, people stay for longer and higher percentage of people are detained rather than there by choice.

“Developed by nurses for mental health leaders, the framework aims to ensure that mental health inpatient wards have the right staffing level for their specific needs.

“This is just one component of a significant ongoing programme of work that NHS England and its partners are undertaking to ensure the NHS is safely staffed with the right people, with the right skills.”

The focus of the framework is on inpatient staffing, but work is underway on a similar guide for community mental health services. It will feed into the work of the Mental Health Taskforce on establishing the right balance of staff in the many settings treating those with mental illness which is expected to publish at the end of the year.

There is an interactive guide that goes into the detail of this framework. The guide is also available from the Health Education West Midlands’ website. NHS England

Making it better together: a call to action on the future of health and wellbeing boards

Making it better together: a call to action on the future of health and wellbeing boards This call to action outlines a set of proposals to local system leaders and the government to strengthen the impact and leadership of health and wellbeing boards across the country. It also outlines the LGA and NHS Clinical Commissioners shared commitment to support boards to reach their full potential as system leaders driving forward changes that will improve the health of their communities. Local Government Association 

Creating a better care system: setting out key considerations for a reformed, sustainable health, wellbeing and care system of the future

Creating a better care system: setting out key considerations for a reformed, sustainable health, wellbeing and care system of the future This report, by Ernst and Young and commissioned by the LGA, is based on the sector's views and proposes the establishment of a £1.3 billion a year transformation fund until 2019/20 to develop a new health and social care system. Supported by a pooled health and social care budget, devolved powers for health, and reformed incentives, the fund should focus on keeping people independent and preventing complex and long-term conditions. Local Government Association

Sugary drinks killing 'hundreds of thousands', study estimates

Sugary drinks killing 'hundreds of thousands', study estimates “Sugary drinks are killing 184,000 adults around the world every year, says study,” The Independent reports. This is the alarming claim of researchers who created a model of sugary drink-related deaths based on global consumption rates.

They defined sugary drinks as any sugar-sweetened fizzy drinks, fruit drinks (not pure fruit juice), sweetened iced teas, sports or energy drinks, or homemade sugary drinks. The model used a large amount of data on the consumption of sugary drinks from national surveys, and on the effect of sugary drink consumption on body mass index (BMI) and risk of diabetes, and the knock-on effect of BMI on heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

It estimated that sugary drinks caused around 133,000 deaths in adults per year globally from diabetes, with 45,000 from heart disease and 6,450 from cancer. In the UK, it estimated that 1,316 deaths per year were caused by sugary drinks – equivalent to about 30 people per one million adults.

As with any modelling study, results are based on the data available and some assumptions, which may or may not be correct. Therefore, these figures should be viewed as estimates, rather than exact numbers.

Female lung cancer cases top 20,000

Female lung cancer cases top 20,000 Cases of lung cancer in women have reached 20,000 a year in the UK for the first time since records began. BBC News

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Ebola back in Liberia with new case

Ebola back in Liberia with new case The body of a dead Liberian man tests positive for Ebola - the country's first reported case since it was declared free of the disease. BBC News

ILF: What will change?

ILF: What will change? The Independent Living Fund is closing. What will change? BBC News

Point-of-care CRP tests could save NHS millions

Point-of-care CRP tests could save NHS millions A multidisciplinary panel of leading of experts has today called for an effective and efficient means to implement point of care (POC) C-reactive protein (CRP) testing in the NHS. OnMedica

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Equality at work is still a pipedream for people with mental health problems

Equality at work is still a pipedream for people with mental health problems People who have spent time in mental health institutions have valuable experiences and skills that they feel they have to hide from prospective employers. The Guardian

Cuba named first country to end mother-to-child HIV transmission

Cuba named first country to end mother-to-child HIV transmission The World Health Organization hailed ‘one of the greatest public health achievements possible’, adding that it was ‘an important step towards having an Aids-free generation’. The Daily Mail

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What the NHS can learn from healthcare innovations around the world

What the NHS can learn from healthcare innovations around the world Successful innovations, such as Zambia’s mobile phone project for HIV results, can result in widespread use and improved health outcomes.

The Five Year Forward View – the vision for the future of the NHS in England – will require radical change at every level of the healthcare system. We must take advantage of innovative ways of working, engage patients in their own care and implement new treatments and technologies. But the time lag between innovation and system-wide transformation is often too long.

Recent research by the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) has sought to identify the factors that can facilitate rapid change. The IGHI examined eight organisations in seven countries that successfully introduced and rapidly spread an innovation that resulted in improved health outcomes.
Continue reading... The Guardian

Legal highs: could this finally be the end of the road?

Legal highs: could this finally be the end of the road? With a blanket ban on legal highs soon to come into force, Joe Shute visits the high security Government drugs laboratory on the frontline. The Daily Telegraph

How NHS 111 helpline refuses to send out ambulances

How NHS 111 helpline refuses to send out ambulances Exclusive special report: Having a heart attack? Don't call NHS 111. Our reporter went undercover. The Daily Telegraph

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Jeremy Hunt calls for national debate about caring for the elderly

Jeremy Hunt calls for national debate about caring for the elderly Many people in Britain now lead such “atomised lives” that they do not have “any idea” when their elderly relatives are ill or dying, the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, will warn. The Independent

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