New pilot scheme sees mental health advisors stationed at council's offices

New pilot scheme sees mental health advisors stationed at council's offices Kettering people struggling with their mental health can now receive specialist help at the town’s council offices after a pilot scheme was launched.

Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust, which has responsibility for helping people with their mental wellbeing, has launched the project with three mental health workers operating out of the council offices in Bowling Green Road.

The KBC hub has been set up in response to findings that some people were hesitant to access mental health services through traditional channels. The health body says it wants the pilot to ‘normalise conversations’ about mental health. Northamptonshire Telegraph

Sexual assault forensics centres failing some victims

Sexual assault forensics centres failing some victims Young victims of sexual assault are not being forensically examined within a critical time period at some privately-run referral centres, a BBC investigation has found.

Doctors also told the BBC they had seen cases of incorrect recordings of injuries and evidence contamination.

Victims' Commissioner Baroness Newlove said the "failings" were "shocking".

NHS England - which jointly commissions services - said it had not been made aware of the concerns. BBC News

Praise for 'ambitious' NHS plan but experts warn patients may wait longer as funding decisions bite

Praise for 'ambitious' NHS plan but experts warn patients may wait longer as funding decisions bite After a weekend-long dissection of the NHS long-term plan’s headline ambitions, it was hoped that Monday would fully flesh out what’s in store for the health service as it invests a £20.5bn budget increase over the next decade.

The final document, which runs to 136 densely-typed pages, has commitments for every corner of the NHS and has received near-universal praise for its ambition and detail.

In particular it sets out that a £4.5bn slice of the budget increase will be spent on GP and community care to diagnose diseases early and treat people closer to home. The Independent

See also:

• Health Secretary: NHS 'has got to be better' at working with councils Channel 4 News
• Theresa May claims UK's 'strong public finances' and Brexit will pay for a better NHS The Daily Mail
• Four-hour A&E waiting time target could be scrapped The Daily Mail
• NHS plan: The key points from the new 134-page strategy The Daily Telegraph
• NHS plan: Smartphone consultations to replace hospital appointments in NHS 'digital first' plan The Daily Telegraph
• NHS chief backs call for tougher, faster A&E waiting-time standards The Guardian
• Long-term plan for NHS England 'undeliverable' amid staffing crisis The Guardian
• NHS chiefs tell Theresa May it is time to curb privatisation The Guardian
• NHS 10-year plan relies on raiding other countries for thousands of nurses and doctors The Independent
• The government’s 10-year NHS plan is welcome – but a shift in public opinion is needed if we are to save it The Independent

Joe Harrison: ‘The NHS must stop relying on pen and pape

Joe Harrison: ‘The NHS must stop relying on pen and paper’ The head of Milton Keynes hospital foundation trust says technology can save time, lives and money

Parts of the NHS are still in the dark ages, technologically speaking,” says Professor Joe Harrison, chief executive of Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS foundation trust. “There are still sites across the NHS that don’t even have wifi. In certain parts of the NHS we still believe that paper and pen are the way to capture data,” he adds with barely concealed contempt. Harrison worries that the service’s unhappy history with technology, most infamously exemplified by the failure of the £12bn Connecting for Health initiative, a bold attempt by the then Labour government to modernise NHS IT but plagued by cost overruns and scrapped in 2011, has left it poorly placed to benefit from the digital revolution.

Harrison fervently believes that embracing tech, IT and digital innovation helps patients and staff and improves the quality of care. He appears both baffled and horrified that doctors at outpatient clinics still write notes from the consultation into the patient’s often bulging paper medical record and that hospitals send patients letters to confirm their next appointment. “The vast majority of people who use tech on a daily basis would be happy to communicate and engage with the NHS in a different way.” The Guardian

Schoolchildren to be offered sleep lessons after rise in disorders

Schoolchildren to be offered sleep lessons after rise in disorders Move follows concerns about ‘hidden health disaster’ of sleeplessness among young

Schoolchildren across Britain may be offered sleep lessons to help tackle the problem of insomnia among young people.

The lessons became available to teachers at the end of last year and were devised by the PSHE Association and the department for sleep medicine at Evelina London children’s hospital. The Guardian

Bone surgeons the most sexist in the NHS, new poll suggests

Bone surgeons the most sexist in the NHS, new poll suggests Bone surgeons are the most sexist in the NHS, according to a confidential poll which suggests discrimination against female staff is rife.

Results of an online survey found more than half of female surgeons in the UK have experienced or witnessed workplace abuse, with those working in orthopaedics most likely to have suffered.

The specialism, concerned with treating conditions of the musculoskeletal system, has long had a reputation within medicine as physically demanding due to the nature of the operations involved. The Daily Telegraph 

See also:

• A woman’s place is in theatre: women’s perceptions and experiences of working in surgery from the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland women in surgery working group (open access) BMJ Open
• Female surgeons frustrated by male-dominated field – study The Guardian

The new £500m hospital lying empty just three miles from where Theresa May launched her NHS plan

The new £500m hospital lying empty just three miles from where Theresa May launched her NHS plan Three miles from yesterday’s NHS launch, a £500 million hospital lies empty and unused.

The 13-storey building houses top-of-the range scanners and other medical equipment – and was meant to have been finished two years ago.

However work ground to a halt last January following a botched private finance initiative deal with the now collapsed company Carillion. The Daily Mail

Expert warns the UK could face its own U.S. style opiod crisis

Expert warns the UK could face its own U.S. style opiod crisis Around eight million people in the UK live with chronic pain, where symptoms persist for longer than three months.

The problem for is that the diagnosis of chronic pain often leads to a separate set of problems entirely due to the painkilling medication they are prescribed.

This leaves thousands dependent on the drugs through no fault of their own. The Daily Mail

See also:

• Discovery of endogenous opioid systems: what it has meant for the clinician's understanding of pain and its treatment (abstract) Pain