Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, illustrated the state of public health at last week’s Public Health England conference by showing the audience his assistant’s lunch deal bought on the way to Warwick. A cheese and pickle sandwich is not bad, but why include the sugary drink and packet of crisps? He then pulled […]
Category: NHS
Hugh Alderwick: The ups and downs on the road to health service improvement
Parallels between the successful transformation of the Veterans Health Administration (VA) in the United States and the changes needed in the NHS in England have been made for a number of years. But recent troubles at the VA offer some important lessons for the NHS in the future, as explored in a roundtable discussion held […]
Samir Dawlatly: A case of semantics
The problem lies in semantics. GP. General practitioner. Could one be more vague than that? There’s an argument that since, on the whole, we provide general medical services (in medical centres) we should be called general medical practitioners. After all, my undergraduate training was in medicine and surgery, not simply everything in general. Around the […]
David Oliver: Tails of the unexpected—could the NHS learn from vets?
As I sit at my keyboard, I am looking at my calm and contented 3 year old calico cat, Tilly. Apart from the shaved area on her flank, you wouldn’t know anything had ever been different. Yet last week, she came close to dying from acute kidney injury. I had come home after a long day […]
Richard Smith: Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, live
When Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, was buying his Sunday papers a few weeks ago he encountered an elderly woman complaining that her newspaper didn’t contain the television section. It did, as the newsagent pointed out to her before asking her, “Would you like me to walk you home?” Stevens was struck that […]
Billy Boland: A lesson in perseverance
It did not feel like the end when I submitted my portfolio for the NHS Leadership Academy, and sure enough it was not. I’ve been asked to make amendments, and there is also the submission of my closing statement to do, the final piece of written work on the journey. Any celebratory talk had been […]
Sally Norton: NHS hospitals—does a spoonful of sugar help the medicine go down?
At last, with health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s announcement of new measures being introduced to improve the standard of food in English hospitals, we may finally see better quality food in our hospitals. These changes will see hospitals ranked according to the quality and choice of the food they serve. They will hopefully provide some sanity, […]
Samir Dawlatly: The slippery slope of general practice
I live at the top of a hill. One winter it snowed after a hard frost, just a thin layer of snow on top of the existing ice. The morning after the snowfall, I jumped into my car, put the radio on, and was into second gear before I knew what I was doing. Better […]
Mary McCarthy: UK GPs versus EU GPs
I sometimes wonder if the UK government realises how much general practices in this country accomplish in comparison to their counterparts in Europe and the United States. There was a time, 20 or 30 years ago, when there was not much to choose between GPs in the UK and family doctors in other countries, apart from […]
Chris Hopson: NHS waiting times—the long and the short of it
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s speech earlier this week, which called on NHS hospitals to clear their backlog of patients waiting more than a year for treatment, rightly pointed to the personal consequences of each individual case on the waiting list. While recognising that some delays are the result of patient choice or good clinical reasons, waiting for treatment if […]