Month: June 2012

Doctors reject assisted suicides – The Independent

Doctors have rejected calls to take a neutral stance on assisted suicide.

Delegates to the British Medical Association’s annual conference in Bournemouth yesterday restated their opposition to assisted dying, with one doctor likening it to murder.

They decided that a change in their position would send the wrong message.

The Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD) had called for the BMA to move its position from opposition to “studied” neutrality. HPAD’s chairman, Professor Raymond Tallis, said assisted dying should be a matter for society as a whole and not just the medical profession. He called on the BMA to adopt a neutral position on a change in the law.

via Doctors reject assisted suicides – Health News – Health & Families – The Independent.

Health and Social Care Act explained

27 June, 2012 (re-post)

A series of factsheets on the Health and Social Care Act 2012 explain particular topics contained in the Act, including its key themes. They include case studies of the policy in action, or answer frequently asked questions about the topic.

The factsheets were first published in October 2011 and have since been updated to reflect the changes made during the Act’s Parliamentary passage. The list below show the titles available – follow this link to review them via Health and Social Care Act explained | Modernisation of health and care.

  • Overview
  • Case for change
  • Overview of health and care structures
  • Scrutiny and improvements
  • Key policy areas in the Act
  • Clinically-led commissioning
  • Provider regulation to support innovative and efficient services
  • Greater voice for patients
  • New focus for public health
  • Greater accountabilty locally and nationally
  • Modernising health and care public bodies
  • Support worker regulation
  • Cross-cutting themes of the Bill
  • Improving quality of care
  • Tackling inequalities in healthcare
  • Promoting better integration of health and care services
  • Choice and competition
  • The role of the Secretary of State
  • Reconfiguration of services
  • Establishing new national bodies
  • Embedding research as a core function of the health service
  • Education and training

via Health and Social Care Act explained | Modernisation of health and care.

Barnaby thanks to all staff artists

A HUGE thank you to all the artists who contributed to the Barnaby Art Festival at the weekend.  Despite the rain on Friday there were plenty of admiring visitors to view some stunning photographs, weaving and paintings.  In all, there were 62 pieces on view to the public but these are now back in the Library after a most successful exhibition.

As you can imagine, secure space here is limited so as pieces are now available for collection – please call in the staff library reception to claim your works.

There will be a further report on this item when the photographs are available.

 

 

Trust has HR Vision

East Cheshire NHS Trust rolls out HR Vision with 6pm
Times of Malta

East Cheshire’s NHS Trust has entrusted IT company 6pm to rollout its HR Vision Business Process Management solution.

Developed by 6pm, HR Vision is based on the world-beating xCP BPM platform by EMC, and has more than 20 processes already developed for human resources including recruitment, appraisal and changes in contractual circumstances, allowing HR teams and service managers to track their cases online. The solution complements applications already used in human resources by managing the business process more effectively.

“Not only will the initial processes enable us to organise our workload much more efficiently, we will have the ability in-house to add more processes to further streamline the operation and provide a more cost efficient HR service to our customers,” Cheshire HR Services managing director Sally Campbell said. “We expect to see the return on investment in the first 12 months.”


FREE come and collect Journals

Journal Stock Review

The Staff Library is relocating to New Alderley in August, and due to space restrictions we are offering the following journals and hardback ‘Clinics series’ books FREE to anyone who can use them.

  • Anaesthesia / New Scientist           
  • Arch Diseases of Childhood          
  • Education and Practice       
  • Fetal and Neonatal              
  • EMJ                                                                          
  • NEJM
  • Journal of International Med Research
  • QJM               
  • Nursing Times:          2006 and earlier
  • Nursing Standard:     2010 and earlier
  • MDDIRS:                    2010 and earlier

All but the last 12 months of the group below are available:

  • BJS                
  • JRSM
  • HSJ
  • Lancet
  • Medicine
  • Surgery

 

Clinics series (Hardbacks) –

** all stock available except ‘Clinics in Developmental Medicine’

 

  • Emergency Med       
  • Endocrinology          
  • Gastro                                  
  • Geriatrics                  
  • Medicine                   
  • Clinical Orthopaedics & Orthopaedics      
  • Paediatrics                           
  • Rheumatology          
  • Surgery                      

Many archived journals are available, with the exception of Analytical Toxicology.

Health Information Week

2-8 July 2012

A campaign to raise awareness about health information available to everyone in and around East Cheshire is to be launched in July.

Look out for us in the canteen next week when we hope to show you some of the more effective eresources and some apps for your smartphones.

From 2nd to 8th July 2012 HI week  aims to improve access to quality local information and promote healthier communities.

http://nhslocal.nhs.uk/workforce/equip-information/health-information-week.

NICE one BNF!

Our thanks to Janet Dean, Medical Nurse Practitioner, for her positive feedback on the latest NICE BNF web app, which she demonstrated today on her smart phone.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has launched a free British National Formulary (BNF) Smartphone application for download by health and social care professionals who work for or who are contracted by NHS England.

The new app is called NICE BNF and has been developed to provide easy access to the latest up-to-date prescribing information from the BNF – the most widely-used medicines information resource within the NHS.

The NICE BNF app is available to download for free to health and care professionals via the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Users will need to enter their NHS Athens user name and password to activate the app and download the content. 

Once downloaded and activated, the app does not rely on a network connection and will provide direct offline access to the latest version of the BNF. An app for the British National Formulary for Children (BNFC) is in the late stages of development and will be released soon.

 Other available apps include NICE Guidance and NHS Direct – both FREE.

NHS in the news today …

Today in healthcare: Tuesday 26 June

The Guardian – ‎59 minutes ago‎
10.38am: Clare Horton writes The South London trust story is a key talking point on Twitter this morning. Financial journalist Paul Lewis tweets: You read it here first – PFI contractors of south London healthcare trust will not take any cost of trust …

Three London hospitals put into a form of administration as another 20 NHS …

The Independent – ‎6 minutes ago‎
Another 20 NHS trusts could have severe financial cuts imposed upon them following Andrew Lansley’s decision to put three London hospitals into a form of administration, it emerged today. South London Healthcare NHS Trust, which was losing £1 million a …

Administrator to cut services after takeover of ailing South London Healthcare …

The Independent – ‎12 minutes ago‎
An NHS hospital trust which is losing more than £1m a week is set to be taken over by a Government appointed administrator with the power to sack staff and cut services as part of a radical restructuring programme. In a controversial move, …

NEW Horizon Scanning page

Please see the newest page on our web portal – Horizon Scanning.  We hope this feature will prove popular whatever your area of expertise or discipline.

The Staff Library is developing a new service.  Horizon Scanning or current awareness as it is sometimes known, is a time saving method of keeping up to date on a chosen topic, with the minimum of effort on your part. 

We regularly review news and information published from many quality Internet sources such as BMJ, Harvard Business Review, King’s Fund and Cochrane Library to name but a few.   We then collate the results for you in a format that is easy to read, review and share.  News is already published on this web portal under appropriate page headings eg: Nursing, Orthopaedics and Community Care for instance.  However, instead of you having to remember to visit our website, we can send the news directly to your Inbox.

If you have a specific topic in mind, please contact us so that we can discuss a bespoke service.   This is a FREE service and all that is required is a valid email address. Why not give it a try?  Take a look at the current collection now

The Department of Health sets out plans for “innovation networks”

AMRC blog

The Department of Health has invited local NHS organisations and universities to form Academic Health Science Networks (ASHNs) and link up with local industry and charities to help foster innovation within the NHS and health-related sectors. It’s hoped these will spread best practice and innovations quickly across the country and in doing so, drive economic growth and improve patient care. The plans come out of Sir David Nicholson’s recommendations on NHS innovation made back in December. Expressions of interest are being sought (20 July deadline) and the first networks are hoped to go live in 2012/13.

Background

The NHS is often described as a poor adopter of innovation. Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, published his recommendations aimed at improving innovation and uptake in the NHS back in December (we blogged about it here). In that report he identified Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs

View original post 776 more words

The Year 2011/12 – NHS Chief Executive’s annual report published

The year 2011/12 launched today at the annual NHS Confederation Conference and Exhibition. This is the annual report for 2011/12, in which Sir David Nicholson reviews the NHS achievements of the previous 12 months and considers the challenges to come.

This edition includes the quarter, which provides the definitive account of how the NHS is performing at national level against the requirements and indicators set out in the NHS Operating Framework 2011/12.

In his introduction to the year (PDF, 3.9MB), Sir David acknowledges the hard work and diligence of NHS colleagues, with the service now fully committed to delivering the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) efficiency savings.

Against a backdrop of massive organisational change, Sir David praises, ‘the heroic efforts made by the 1.2 million staff who work for our patients in the NHS.’ Together, they have delivered key successes, including the lowest infection rates since the introduction of mandatory surveillance, lower waiting times for A&E, cancer care and dentistry, and the delivery of £5.8 billion efficiency savings.

Sir David acknowledges the efforts of GPs to begin driving clinically-led commissioning and the wider NHS engagement with the new public health agenda and the creation of the Health and Wellbeing Boards.

Although the Health and Social Care Bill has now passed through Parliament, Sir David reminds NHS colleagues of the hard work to come ‘to implement the transition from the old system to the new’. While acknowledging this ‘daunting challenge,’ he believes the annual report demonstrates strong foundations are in place to deliver further change for staff and patients.

Watch the video of Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS, discussing the challenges facing the NHS and the huge progress being made across health services.

Continue reading →

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 – explained

Health and Social Care Act explained
A series of factsheets on the Health and Social Care Act 2012 explain particular topics contained in the Act, including its key themes. They include case studies of the policy in action, or answer frequently asked questions about the topic. The factsheets were first published in October 2011 and have since been updated to reflect the changes made during the Act’s Parliamentary passage.

National adult cardiac surgery audit – annual report 2010/11

The main objective of this audit is to collect information on activity, trends and outcomes in adult cardiac surgery in Great Britain and Ireland. This report presents the data for surgery performed in England and Wales up to the end of March 2011. It is aimed at healthcare professionals, medical directors, managers, clinical governance leads and the public.

Extract from National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research, University College London

Staying safe with medication

Keeping patients safe when they transfer between care providers – getting the medicines right
This report calls for improvements to the transfer of information about medicines when patients move between care settings. It outlines the results of a six-month project involving over 30 healthcare organisations which volunteered to implement RPS guidance on transfer of medicines information.