Tuesday 15 November 2016

Child mental health money not making frontline - report

Child mental health money not making frontline - report Money earmarked to boost mental health provision for children in England is failing to make it to front-line services, a new report suggests.

The government last year pledged £1.4bn for child mental health by 2020, but a report says millions of pounds is being used to offset NHS cuts elsewhere.

Specialist teams are also turning away up to a quarter of youngsters, it said.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the government was "determined to address" mental health problems. BBC News

Step up efforts to communicate alcohol harms to public, government urged

Step up efforts to communicate alcohol harms to public, government urged The government must step up its efforts, and run mass media campaigns, to help the public understand just what damage alcohol can do to their health, the chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance, has insisted.

Public awareness of the links between alcohol consumption and serious disease is still low, insists Professor Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alliance and special advisor to the Royal College of Physicians, at the start of this year’s Alcohol Awareness Week. OnMedica

Infective conjunctivitis cases ‘clogging up’ GP appointments system

Infective conjunctivitis cases ‘clogging up’ GP appointments system The practice that many schools and nurseries have of refusing to admit children with infective conjunctivitis unless they have a prescription for antibiotics is unintentionally “clogging up” the GP appointments system, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has warned.

Around 160,000 GP appointments could be freed up, if schools and nurseries changed their policies, it says.

To mark the beginning of national Self Care Week, the College has written to the schools inspectorate, OFSTED, calling for nursery, pre-schools and childcare providers to re-think their policies. OnMedica

See also:

The fall-less city and other innovations for a healthier old age

The fall-less city and other innovations for a healthier old age Rapid urbanisation and ageing populations mean that cities must become better for older people to live in. We have the technology to make this happen

The city of Liverpool is aiming to become a “fall-less” city – so that all older adults with limited or reduced mobility can venture forth into the streets, parks and other public places knowing that their chances of falling have been significantly reduced. One-third of older people in the UK experience a fall each year, rising to half the over-80s. Working with the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, the city council is implementing falls prevention and mitigation as part of its Age-Friendly City (AFC) initiative.

Promoted by the World Health Organisation, the age-friendly city movement has spread across the globe. With projections that half Europe’s population will be over 50 within a couple of decades and that the world will have more people over 60 than under 16 by 2050, the age-proofing of our environments is high on the agenda. Continue reading... The Guardian

The secret life of an oncologist: witnessing the most painful and intimate moments of life | Anonymous

The secret life of an oncologist: witnessing the most painful and intimate moments of life | Anonymous It’s not all doom and gloom. The best part of the job is when cancer treatment works and patients return to good health. Occasionally there are miracles

People assume that oncology is all doom, gloom and death. To be honest it can be, but thankfully not all of the time, or else nobody could cope with doing it.

Cancer can be a disease of dreadful retrospectives – that lump that was looked at but not biopsied; that mole that was judged to be OK. These patients and their families are justifiably angry. Others have refused to see what was plainly staring them in the face.

Talking to patients and their relatives when there is bad news is definitely the worst part of the job Continue reading... The Guardian

In NHS management being fired means you continue working for more money

In NHS management being fired means you continue working for more money The health service is so short of experienced leaders, it ends up paying some £1,000 a day to plug management gaps

When I had to leave my role as a senior NHS manager, I discovered that the health service has a well-used but little-known system for easing people out of top jobs. And I learned that it doesn’t work well for anyone: trusts, our healthcare system, managers, patients or the taxpayer.

It’s quite common for senior leaders to have to step down, even when there are no performance issues and their actions haven’t risked patient safety. Sometimes, as in any sector, people simply end up in jobs that aren’t right for them. And just as often, managers, keen to support NHS bodies through difficult change projects, take on tasks that prove impossible to accomplish. Continue reading... The Guardian

NHS IT blunder sees system clogged after email sent to 1.2 million employees

NHS IT blunder sees system clogged after email sent to 1.2 million employees Large sections of the NHS email system ground to snail's pace this morning after an IT worker sent a message to 840,000 employees due to a bug in the system

Some staff used the email function “reply to all”, flooding servers with extra traffic and making the system unusable for many.

Exasperated doctors and nurses took to social media to complain about the avalanche of emails in their inboxes and begging colleagues to stop replying.

Others complained that they had not been able to log in to their accounts at all.

One health service manager tweeted: “So essentially #nhsmail users have all just carried out a DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack on themselves”. The Daily Telegraph

See also: