Tuesday 22 January 2019

Northamptonshire health trust nominated for award after championing employees' wellbeing

Northamptonshire health trust nominated for award after championing employees' wellbeing Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has been shortlisted for an award in recognition of its employees' wellbeing. The trust has been nominated in the leadership and culture category in the upcoming Employee Wellbeing Awards on February 7.

The category celebrates businesses and organisations that put employee wellbeing at the heart of their culture, championed by leadership from the top executives through to the senior line managers. Northamptonshire Telegraph

New KGH role aims to make the most of digital technology

New KGH role aims to make the most of digital technology Kettering General Hospital has filled a new role designed to maximise the benefits of digital technology for patients and staff.

Andy Callow will become the trust’s new chief digital and information officer from spring this year. He brings a wealth of digital experience to the role from a career spanning the public and private sector. Northamptonshire Telegraph

Sexual and reproductive health in England: local and national data

Sexual and reproductive health in England: local and national data Guidance to help health professionals including local government, service providers and commissioners understand the sexual health data available across England and how the data can be accessed. It includes data collected by Public Health England and other organisations.

Report on the health of refugees and migrants in the WHO European Region

Report on the health of refugees and migrants in the WHO European Region This report creates an evidence base with the aim of catalysing progress towards developing and promoting migrant-sensitive health systems in the 53 Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region and beyond. This report seeks to illuminate the causes, consequences and responses to the health needs and challenges faced by refugees and migrants in the Region, while also providing a snapshot of the progress being made across the Region. Additionally, the report seeks to identify gaps that require further action through collaboration, to improve the collection and availability of high-quality data and to stimulate policy initiatives. World Health Organization

Incorporating concerns for equity into health resource allocation: a guide for practitioners

Incorporating concerns for equity into health resource allocation: a guide for practitioners Unfair differences in health care access, quality or health outcomes exist between and within countries around the world, and improving health equity is an important social objective for many governments and international organisations. This paper summaries the methods for analysing health equity available to policymakers regarding the allocation of health sector resources. Centre for Health Economics

How Bournemouth's 'streaming' nurses ease A&E pressure

How Bournemouth's 'streaming' nurses ease A&E pressure Senior A&E doctors are warning that hospitals are teetering on the edge of safety. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine says that after a quieter start to the year, the pressure has intensified this month.

However, in the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, waiting times in A&E have fallen under a new initiative, which places a senior nurse near the front doors to turn away non-emergency patients.

No-one is sent home under the policy, but simply redirected to GP clinics and pharmacies. BBC News

Ten years of checklists have improved surgical safety

Ten years of checklists have improved surgical safety A checklist for surgical teams developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and introduced within the NHS 10 years ago has saved countless lives and improved outcomes for patients, NHS England says.

The Surgical Safety Checklist is a simple tool designed to improve communication and teamwork by bringing together the surgeons, anaesthesia providers and nurses involved in care to confirm that critical safety measures are performed before, during and after an operation. It was launched by the WHO in June 2008, with substantial input from UK clinicians, and mandated for use in the NHS in January 2009. OnMedica

Gosport hospital scandal: Evidence was sufficient for prosecutions 14 years ago, detective says

Gosport hospital scandal: Evidence was sufficient for prosecutions 14 years ago, detective says There is enough evidence to bring criminal charges over the deaths of at least 450 people at Gosport War Memorial Hospital given unnecessary doses of opiates, according to the detective who investigated the case.

Steve Watts, former assistant chief constable at Hampshire Constabulary, led the investigation into 94 of the deaths and said he believes prosecutions could have been brought when he handed evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service in 2005.

“I think it’s strong enough now, I think it was strong enough then, and I think there was an overriding public interest in doing so,” Mr Watts told the BBC’s Panorama – in an episode which aired on Monday evening. The Independent

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Cancer in your 20s is terrifying – too many of us are left to cope alone

Cancer in your 20s is terrifying – too many of us are left to cope alone | Hannah Partos Survival rates for 13- to 24-year-olds are rising. Yet poorer patients fare less well, and vital post-cancer care is still lacking

When I was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2013, aged 22, I was shocked to find out how little survival rates had improved among young people with cancer in recent decades. Research had left us “forgotten in the middle” between children and older adults, as one study put it, with improvements in outcomes among teens and twentysomethings lagging behind the dramatic advances seen among the general population. The Guardian

Opioids don’t work well for chronic pain. So why do we prescribe them?

Opioids don’t work well for chronic pain. So why do we prescribe them? | Mariam Alexander There’s a temptation to offer desperate patients a solution in a medicine bottle. But long-lasting pain has complex causes

One of the key principles you learn in medical school is that doctors should “do no harm”. But what should doctors do when our patients insist that we do things that we know are harmful? This is the dilemma that thousands of doctors face on a daily basis when tasked with helping patients with chronic pain.

Pain is a universal human experience that alerts us to bodily harm. Most pain is transient and requires no specific intervention other than the passage of time. For more severe acute pain (pain that lasts hours, days or weeks) and cancer pain at the end of life, modern medicine has several very effective treatments – pills, injections and the like. But chronic pain (which persists for months or years) is a very different entity.

Patients who have complex health needs fall between the cracks of services which are designed with policy in mind rather than pathology... The Guardian

Doctors share image to show we are losing the '10-year challenge' against antibiotic resistance

Doctors share image to show we are losing the '10-year challenge' against antibiotic resistance Compared to their 2009 10-year challenge photo, antibiotics don't look so good too good.

Several doctors are trying to harness the power of the #10YearChallenge trend on social media to draw attention to the growing, worldwide public health crisis of antibiotic resistance.

They are re-tweeting side-by-side photos of what appear to be petri dishes full of bacteria with antibiotics sitting in them - one from 2009 and one from 2019.

'This is genius and incredibly depressing at the same time,' tweeted Dr Kate Flavin, an internist in the UK. The Daily Mail

Number of visits to England’s A&E departments by homeless people ‘has more than TREBLED since 2011’

Number of visits to England’s A&E departments by homeless people ‘has more than TREBLED since 2011’ The British Medical Association found nearly 32,000 homeless people visited A&E departments in England last year. They blame rising admissions on Government cuts and drugs. The Daily Mail

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