School nurse text service 'ChatHealth' rolled out in Northants

School nurse text service 'ChatHealth' rolled out in Northants A new text-based school nurse service that is designed to make it easier for Northants youngsters to access medical advice has been launched this week by Northamptonshire Healthcare. Northants Herald and Post

See also:

• New School Nurse text based health service Northamptonshire Healthcare

KGH staff pick up awards for outstanding service

KGH staff pick up awards for outstanding service A consultant and an administrator at Kettering General Hospital have won awards for the outstanding service they have provided to medical students who are training to become the next generation of NHS doctors. Northamptonshire Telegraph

NHS planning guidance: an opportunity for collaboration across places?

NHS planning guidance: an opportunity for collaboration across places? The new NHS planning guidance arrived just in time for Christmas. As well as asking NHS organisations to produce their own operational plans for the coming year, it also asks them to work together to make joint plans for their local health and care services – a ‘sustainability and transformation plan’. The focus for NHS policy-makers is shifting from organisations to places. But how will sustainability and transformation plans work in practice? The King's Fund

Fix dementia care hospitals

Fix dementia care hospitals This report into the quality and variation in hospital care for people with dementia has found that too many people with dementia are falling while in hospital, being discharged at night or being marooned in hospital despite their medical treatment having finished. The report launches a campaign to introduce annual statements of dementia care from each hospital, including feedback from patients with dementia, helping to raise standards of care across the country. It also calls for regulators such as Monitor and Care Quality Commission to include standards of dementia care in their assessments. Alzheimer's Society

Hidden voices of maternity: parents with learning disabilities speak out

Hidden voices of maternity: parents with learning disabilities speak out This research aims to capture the experience of a seldom-heard group and it offers recommendations for service improvements to support care to become more person- and family-centred. It found that support group and buddy schemes, community midwifery services and advocacy services were identified as positive aspects of service provision. However, the respondents identified staff attitudes, conflicting information and lack of support for breast feeding and when babies are taken away were the key negative experiences for parents with learning disabilities. Picker Institute Europe

Why hasn't the mystery of Gulf War Syndrome been solved?

Why hasn't the mystery of Gulf War Syndrome been solved? The Royal British Legion is urging the UK government to fund more research into Gulf War Syndrome, a condition reported to have affected thousands of British and US veterans. But why has no one ever properly explained it? BBC News

EU nurses face English language checks

EU nurses face English language checks Nurses and midwives coming to Britain from the EU will now need to prove they are fluent in English under new rules. BBC News

Breast surgeon charged with wounding

Breast surgeon charged with wounding A breast surgeon appears in court charged with unlawfully and maliciously wounding 11 patients. BBC News

Junior doctors hit out at column blaming the 'feminisation' of NHS for causing out-of-hours crisis

Junior doctors hit out at column blaming the 'feminisation' of NHS for causing out-of-hours crisis Hundreds of female and male doctors criticised Dominic Lawson's column in the Sunday Times saying women were too obsessed with their families to work long hours. The Independent

NHS chief demands political consensus on funding elderly and social care

NHS chief demands political consensus on funding elderly and social care Simon Stevens says key to tackling the challenge of paying for care of ageing population is ‘intergenerational fairness’

Britain urgently needs a new political consensus on paying for elderly and social care, and the funding debate should consider the value of pensions and homes, the boss of the NHS has said.

Simon Stevens said one of the main questions in tackling the huge challenge of how to pay for and look after an ageing population was “intergenerational fairness”.Continue reading...  The Guardian

Will Self: the NHS is a power that can jolt even the most despairing back to life

Will Self: the NHS is a power that can jolt even the most despairing back to life My Christmas night in A&E accompanying someone on a vodka bender brought home the reality of what we ask of our guardian angel health service.

I spent much of Christmas night in A&E at St Thomas’ hospital in London, right opposite the Houses of Parliament. It was a fitting end to the year – it would be a fitting end to any year. Hell, it would – and most probably will be – a fitting end to my life. One of my sons was born in St Tom’s; my wife had cancer surgery there. That it stands in the nexus of buildings where the nation’s powers, spiritual and temporal, are arraigned seems only just − for what is free-at-the-point-of-demand healthcare in contemporary Britain if not the alpha and omega of our civil society?

We don’t simply revere the NHS − we worship it. Why wouldn’t we, given it’s a nationwide public institution with branch offices in every town and hamlet; and a mechanism for the redistribution of the most precious resource known to us: the preservation of life itself? It goes further, though, because the NHS is for many of us what takes religion’s place when it comes to contemplating our end – for, if there’s one thing we devoutly wish, it’s to cease upon the midnight hour cosseted and with no pain whatsoever. The terminal is of the essence when it comes to healthcare anyway, given the vast majority of spending on any individual takes place in the last six weeks of their life.

We’re suckers for medical science’s promise of yet more heroic − nay, Frankensteinian − interventions Continue reading... The Guardian

NHS patient survey finds sharp rise in backing for Sunday opening for GP surgeries

NHS patient survey finds sharp rise in backing for Sunday opening for GP surgeries Survey of 800,000 patients in England finds record 18.1% had to wait week or more to see doctor, leading to rise in support for Sunday opening

Record numbers of patients in England are waiting more than a week to see their GPs, prompting the proportion of those backing Sunday opening for doctors’ surgeries to top 40% for the first time.

The NHS’s six-monthly patient survey shows that while the majority are satisfied with their GPs and their access to them, a growing minority report frustration in getting appointments. Continue reading... The Guardian

See also:

• GP practice opening hours are growing problem OnMedica

We must prioritise mental health every day, not just on Blue Monday

We must prioritise mental health every day, not just on Blue Monday Students who are suffering alone from depression and other mental illnesses should know: there is help, and you can get better. The Daily Telegraph

Down's Syndrome people risk 'extinction' at the hands of science, fear and ignorance

Down's Syndrome people risk 'extinction' at the hands of science, fear and ignorance Society doesn't do enough to show women carrying a baby with Down's that the life inside them is precious, intelligent and capable of so much. The Daily Telegraph