Posted by dapo on Jan 27, 2010 in
NHS,
Talking point I have about staff levels within Pathology for the last couple months. The trigger for my train of thought was the news that nurses will have to get a degree. The initial concerns were that degree educated nurses would not want to get their hands dirty doing the routine tasks in the job. It seems that Wales have already made the nursing profession a degree level profession. And it seems that concerns about ‘too posh to wash‘ have not materialised.
Read more…
Tags: BMS, degree, nurses, too posh to wash
Posted by dapo on Oct 20, 2009 in
Uncategorized On my way home last night, I saw an advert for the National Chlamydia Screening Programme on a bus shelter. It seems my concerns about the message not being spread is not really valid after all. Hope the advert is a success!
Tags: advert, chlamydia, screening
This is a story that I didn’t notice when it happened. Beckman Coulter has bought Olympus Diagnostics. Further coverage can be found here, here, here and from Beckman Coulter here. Seems the story broke in Feburary. Shows that my finger isn’t on the pulse!!!
Tags: Beckman Coulter, Olympus Diagnostics
Posted by dapo on Oct 18, 2009 in
Good sites,
Medical I saw a worrying story on the BBC health site today. It concerns chlamydia screening in the UK. It seems the story is based on some research which can be found here. A provional PDF of the research can be found here (Note this link may break in the future). As the BBC article points out, chlamydia is a “silent infection”. You do not get any obvious signs of having caught the infection. With current rates are rising you would like to hope that promoting screening would be a higher proirity. It still seems that some things are still taboo.
Tags: BBC, chlamydia, screening
Posted by dapo on Oct 12, 2009 in
NHS,
News I saw an interesting piece on the BBC news site. It talked about a report from the Royal College of Surgeons that suggests that the 48 hour per week work limit for doctors is potentially damaging patient care. The original report can be found here.
Whilst the report does contain some valid points e.g. continuity of care being lost, these points are not incompatible with a 48 hour limit. They are incompatible with a 48 hour limit and getting no extra staff to manage the shortfall. The problems discussed in the report can all be handled if the shortfall in hours is plugged by a similar increase in staff. I accept the training issues involved in getting these extra people to a required standard by the European Working Time Regulations have been a long time coming and the underlying training issues could have been addressed by now if action had been taken earlier.
Read more…
Tags: 48 hours, BBC, EWTR, NHS, RCS, WTD
Posted by dapo on Aug 25, 2009 in
Uncategorized I seems that the training site has been hit with a large amount of spam accounts. I am trying to delete them as and when I spot them. You may notice the odd bit of spam on the site as a consequence. I will try and remove anything I find. Please be understanding if I accidently delete your account!
Posted by dapo on Jul 28, 2009 in
CPD,
Good sites,
Medical I am currently working on a series of lectures for the Medical Laboratory Assistants in our laboratory. The lecture series is designed to provide some background for the MLA on the various tests we perform and hopefully help them to understand some the clinical details they might see to help them in test requesting.
Xanthochromia is one of the lectures I am currently working on. Whilst performing some research, I found a Youtube clip on performing a Lumbar puncture which I thought might be useful for other people to use. It did make think that this is a really good way of using Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_0gOI8uV0
Posted by dapo on Jul 16, 2009 in
ACB,
CPD ANOTHER date for your diary.
This is for Frontiers in Laboratory Medicine, or FILM. You can register your interest at:
http://www.acb.org.uk/site/film.asp
Tags: ACB, CPD, FILM
Posted by dapo on Jul 16, 2009 in
ACB,
CPD Another date for your diary. This one is a bit more short notice though. It is a joint AACC/ACB meeting. Details can be found here or :
http://www.acb.org.uk/docs/AACC-ACB%20Programme.pdf
Tags: AACC, ACB
Posted by dapo on Jul 16, 2009 in
ACB,
CPD Date for your diary, 10th-13th May, Glasgow. This is the dates for the next Focus meeting.