Back in June, I was putting the finishing touches to my application for the NHS Leadership Academy. A new and ambitious venture, it aims to bring leadership and management development to all corners of the NHS on an “industrial scale.” [1] According to its website, around £46 million will be invested into the academy by […]
Category: NHS
Tara Lamont: A female Dr Finlay for the 21st century
My weekly run with a GP friend has become a breathless litany of the ways in which she feels she and her practice are failing patients. Last week, she resigned after almost 20 years as a GP partner. She left with regret—still loving the doctor-ing, but no longer feeling she can do it properly. How […]
Kailash Chand: Health tourism does not cost the NHS vast sums of money
The government this week announced the first part of its planned crackdown on health tourism, with the Home Office unveiling a host of measures, including plans for a health levy on the visas of migrants seeking to settle in the UK. The debate around this issue often focuses on the misconception, sadly sometimes repeated by […]
Mark Taubert: Palliative care—a “depressing” specialty?
As part of the Dying Matters Awareness Week in the UK, we were all encouraged to talk openly about dying in an attempt to be more ready for it. [1] This is something that those working in specialties like palliative care encourage and embrace. But are we truthfully that willing to talk more about our […]
Richard Cook: 1984
1984 was a great year—and not just for George Orwell lovers, or for me as I embarked on my medical education. Daley Thompson won his second Olympic gold medal in the decathlon event. Breaking the world record, he secured his place in athletics history. Picture the scene afterwards if you can, as journalists jostled to […]
Anna Smajdor: Should we incentivise compassion in the NHS?
In response to the details of catastrophic failures in Mid Staffordshire NHS trust, David Cameron recently suggested that nurses’ pay should be dependent on their compassion. The idea that we should reinforce compassion in healthcare is seldom questioned, even if the means by which we attempt this is sometimes disputed. However, I suggest that the […]
Richard Cook: Twitter, doctors, and rules
Ever get frustrated during a consultation? How should doctors deal with that? The patient comes first of course—we, as doctors, know that and have that mantra at the centre of how we work. What if, just if, the doctor came first? How would a consultation look? If you could draw up a list of how […]
Mike Hobday: Understanding our growing cancer population
All areas of healthcare are rich in data, some more so than others. Take intensive care. As patients are constantly monitored; the intensive care unit (ICU) is one of the most data intense areas of a hospital. But data alone are no good. We need to translate them, firstly into information and then into insight, […]
Roger Taylor on how to use data to improve healthcare
Don Berwick’s report on patient safety in the NHS, published last week, adds another viewpoint to the question of how we tackle poor quality in health services. It supplements the reports from Professor Sir Bruce Keogh on high mortality hospitals and from Robert Francis QC into the events at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. There are […]
Kailash Chand: How can we resource a 24/7 NHS?
The secretary of state for health in England Jeremy Hunt, has on numerous occasions expressed that he would like to see a seven day a week NHS, where patients get the same quality of treatment at weekends as on any working day. This is laudable. All efforts should be made to improve services at weekends, […]