Doctors warn visitors to keep away from Northants hospitals after rise in people with norovirus bug

Doctors warn visitors to keep away from Northants hospitals after rise in people with norovirus bug Medics are warning patients to stay away from visiting friends and family in hospital if they have been infected by the norovirus bug.

With health services across Northamptonshire seeing a higher than usual number of patients with norovirus, doctors are telling loved ones to stay away from hospital for two days after diarrhoea and sickness symptoms have stopped to avoid it spreading. Northampton Chronicle and Echo

Growing pressures on access and staffing risk creating ‘perfect storm’ for people using mental health and learning disability services

Growing pressures on access and staffing risk creating ‘perfect storm’ for people using mental health and learning disability services The Care Quality Commission’s annual assessment of the state of health and social care in England shows that quality ratings have been maintained overall – but people’s experience of care is determined by whether they can access good care when they need it.

This year’s State of Care considers the pressures faced by health and social care as a whole – but focuses particularly on inpatient mental health and learning disability services, the area where CQC is seeing an impact on quality.

While the overall quality picture for the mental health sector, which includes community mental health services, remains stable, this masks a real deterioration in some specialist inpatient services which has continued after 31 July 2019, the cut-off point for the data included in the report. Care Quality Commission

See also:

• The state of health care and adult social care in England 2019/19 Care Quality Commission
• Care Quality Commission presents mixed picture of the state of care in England The Health Foundation
• The King's Fund responds to the Care Quality Commission's State of care report The King's Fund
• More than half of A&Es 'not good enough' BBC News
• Half of NHS A&E departments 'are inadequate or require improvement' The Daily Mail
• More than half of A&Es now failing as breakdowns in non-emergency care sees flood of desperate patients The Daily Telegraph
• More than half of A&Es provide substandard care, says watchdog The Guardian
• A&Es may struggle to cope this winter as most are ‘inadequate’ or ‘require improvement’, inspectors say The Independent

Politicians should avoid the temptation of another NHS top-down re-organisation

Politicians should avoid the temptation of another NHS top-down re-organisation Most commentators think a general election is not far off. Whether the current incumbent returns or there is someone new in the hot seat that is the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, there will be no shortage of complex and urgent issues to occupy their attention, whether it’s overcoming deep and pervasive workforce shortages or grasping the nettle of social care funding and reform. The King's Fund

Queen's Speech has no concrete proposals for social care and worrying lack of reassurances for future workforce

Queen's Speech has no concrete proposals for social care and worrying lack of reassurances for future workforce Professor John Appleby, Chief Economist at the Nuffield Trust responds to the social care announcement in the Queen's Speech 2019.

See also:

• Queen's Speech 2019 The Cabinet Office
• The King's Fund responds to today's Queen's Speech The King's Fund
• Queen's Speech: New laws on crime, health and the environment BBC News
• What we learned from the Queen's Speech BBC News

Rough sleepers in homeless hotspots to benefit from NHS mental health outreach

Rough sleepers in homeless hotspots to benefit from NHS mental health outreach Towns with high rates of homelessness are set for investment in specialist mental health care, as part of NHS services for rough sleepers across the country.

The NHS-funded services in seven parts of the country will bring in new psychiatrists, psychologists and other experts to offer homeless people advice and treatment to tackle underlying mental ill health. NHS England

Role of the arts in improving health and well-being

Role of the arts in improving health and well-being Arts interventions, such as singing in a choir to improve chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are considered non-invasive, low-risk treatment options and are increasingly being used by Member States to supplement more traditional biomedical treatments. The Health Evidence Network (HEN) synthesis report on arts and health, which will be launched on 11 November 2019, maps the global academic literature on this subject in both English and Russian. It references over 900 publications, including 200 reviews covering  over 3000 further studies. As such, the report represents the most comprehensive evidence review of arts and health to date. World Health Organization

Head injuries: Cheap drug 'could save thousands of lives a year'

Head injuries: Cheap drug 'could save thousands of lives a year' A cheap and widely available drug could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year worldwide if it was routinely given to people brought into hospital with head injuries, UK doctors say.

Tranexamic acid helps stop bleeding in and around the brain when blood vessels have been torn.

A large international study in The Lancet now suggests it improves patient survival rates if given early enough. BBC News

See also:

• Effects of tranexamic acid on death, disability, vascular occlusive events and other morbidities in patients with acute traumatic brain injury (CRASH-3): a randomised, placebo-controlled trial (open access) The Lancet
• Tranexamic acid could save lives of people with head injuries The Daily Mail

Women get half as many heart attack treatments as men

Women get half as many heart attack treatments as men Women appear to be half as likely to receive treatment for heart attacks as men, suggests research published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

This gender imbalance is all the more surprising given that a new blood test is diagnosing more women with a heart attack. OnMedica

Six-year-old girl at centre of life-support treatment case dies

Six-year-old girl at centre of life-support treatment case dies Doctors had advised child’s transfer to palliative care but her parents opposed recommendation

A six-year-old girl who was at the centre of a high court life-support treatment dispute has died, lawyers have said.

Doctors treating the child had said she should stop receiving life-support treatment and move to a palliative care regime, but her parents, who are also doctors, disagreed. The Guardian

Britain's first blind and deaf medic says seeing and hearing doesn't make you a better doctor

Britain's first blind and deaf medic says seeing and hearing doesn't make you a better doctor Well-meaning folk used to tell Alexandra Adams she couldn’t ski. Blind people can’t, they said. People who are blind and deaf certainly can’t.

It turns out, though, that determination (or ‘sheer stubbornness’, as she puts it) can triumph over disability. The Daily Mail