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 Jun 13, 2009 in
Good sites,
NHS I have been re-examining the content of the training site and realised I could add some extra RSS feeds to the front page. I have added feeds from the Department of Health and the NHS. I hope these extra feeds prove to be a good resource. If any one can suggest other suitable feeds, I am willing to add more.
Tags: Department of Health, NHS, RSS
Posted by dapo on Jan 27, 2009 in
NHS,
News The NHS IT project for computerised records has hit yet more problems. It seems that any IT project will have problems but this project has been hit more than most. Only the air traffic control centre at Swanwick seems to be worse
Tags: IT, NHS
Posted by dapo on Aug 6, 2008 in
Uncategorized I am surprised by this report. I don’t know whether the figures are a ‘real’ disaster or part of political fighting, as the report is by the Conservative Party. I don’t know wether the figures are part of a trend or not. The figures may actually be lower than five or ten years ago, its the size the of the NHS that could make the figures look bad.
I do find it worrying about that one trust has had 1000 + incidents in two years, which is getting close to two a day.
Tags: BBC, NHS, vermin
Posted by dapo on Mar 4, 2008 in
Good sites BBC Health are reporting that waiting times under labour are up.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7271772.stm
Tags: labour, NHS, waiting times
Posted by dapo on Nov 4, 2007 in
Good sites Been looking at the BBC Health website and found some news items which I would like to bring to your attention.
The first story is a protest about the NHS refroms. As someone who works in the NHS, I do feel that we should focus on primary role of patient care rther than all of these targets. Taking care of this will take care of the rest. If we spend time working out which patient is getting close the the 4 hour A&E limit, it means less time is spent on actually treating the patients. This links to a story about making the NHS independent, removing the political tinkering. I do have reservations as this could mean an opening for more private sector involvement. My objection to greater private sector involvement is that they will do the same job and making a profit, why can’t the public sector perform to the same standards?
My second story is about the Papworth Hospital stopping transplants due to high mortality rates. It is sad to see such famous hospital suffer like this, I take heart from the fact that are brave enough to stand up and say this is not good enough. The pressure on the hospital most have been immense, equally, the pressure on them for their success rate. It was a tough decision but I think it was the right one.
Tags: A&E, BBC, mortality, NHS, papworth, politics, private sector, waiting times
Posted by dapo on May 27, 2007 in
Talking point It seems the Americans have been looking at various different countries and their health systems. They have concluded that the US is the the worst or second worse on the various different parameters used. According to this survey, the best health system was the NHS. I must read the full report to find out how this was managed. The full report can be found at:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/Davis_mirrormirrorinternationalpdate_1027.pdf?section=4039
Tags: NHS, UK, US