All Comment articles – Page 325
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Comment
Emma Dent on publishing pictures of NHS demonstrations
A regular point of discussion at HSJTowers is whether we should publish pictures of demonstrations against NHS cuts and closures.
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David Peat on snipers and Special Ones
I believe that in the fullness of time we will look back at these months of uncertainty and see it as a short diversion from the grand task in hand.
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David Woodhead on love and understanding
'If love is all around us, why is it seldom discussed? What is the exact role of love in promoting health? And if love were a desired outcome, how would we recognise it?'
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Comment
Patient involvement
A current exemplar of the way the government misjudges citizen engagement is the proposal to introduce LINks and abolish Patient and Public Involvement Forums.
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Comment
Predicting unplanned admissions
Your article 'Long Term Conditions: Predicting the Future' (2 November 2006) showed the value of measuring the risk of patients experiencing unplanned admissions to hospital, and I thought it would be helpful to highlight other work that is underway
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Comment
Rights and responsibilities is the issue on the Cabinet table
The government believes it has to reassert its power to make policy in response to the Brown-Blair faction-fighting of the autumn. Public services is one of six policy areas under debate (the others include the role of the state, crime and security) and the first to arrive on the Cabinet ...
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Comment
Hilary Thomas on being half-way through radiotherapy
Soon I can put radiotherapy and my emotional reaction to it behind me and enjoy Harry Hill's advice: 'My auntie used to say, what you can't see won't hurt you. She died of radiation poisoning'
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Comment
Professor David J Hunter and Jeffrie Strang on public health and organisational reform
The justification for the current reorganisation of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts is to strengthen the commissioning function of PCTs and to save £250m in management costs. But are these good enough reasons and will the mergers create a period of stasis? ...
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Clinical governance
While I agree with using data for decision making (Click here to read the full story), for this to happen effectively we need greater management leverage of clinical governance.
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Your Humble Servant: non-executive joy
‘As for selection processes, we still can’t fathom them. It used to be so simple: either failed politicians found a way to boost their pension or successful ones got their wives out of the way a few days a month’.
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Comment
Merit awards
Dr Giles Croft's lament about the inaccuracy of Hospital Episode Statistics and their inappropriateness as a means of managing the performance of doctors (HSJ, November 2nd) raises the nice issue of why there are some problems with HES accuracy. Surely such inaccuracies are the product of failures by clinicians to ...
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Comment
Lean thinking
While there is evidence supporting a case management approach to the care of patients in the greatest need of healthcare, this has been less convincing than some seem to believe. Also, the creation of structures that are separate from general practice is both counter-intuitive and seems to run contrary to ...
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Comment
Managing a merger? Don't lose the plot
A new era of NHS mergers is upon us. But lessons from the business world show that they can be painful and uncomfortable. Steve Downing outlines a theatrical route to tackling the problems
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Comment
Reform and instability
'Why instability is inevitable' - Simon Stevens' article on the NHS and the J curve (page 19, 19 October) reminded me of a classic false syllogism: 'It always gets worse before it gets better.It certainly is getting worse. Therefore it will get better.'
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Comment
Privacy in hospitals
I have always had a problem with issues of privacy in acute hospitals. I started my career as a clinical psychologist working with people with learning disabilities and being very aware that I was going into people's homes - even when they were in NHS care.
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Comment
Equality and recruitment
The NHS has a bad reputation when it comes to equality of opportunity. Historically it was slow to move from a colourblind approach to race, and many health organisations only introduced equal opportunity polices when they were required to by legislation.
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Efficiency indicators
The 'Better care, Better Value' indicators are an important step forward. The sickness absence rate in the NHS has never been below 4.5 per cent in the past decade. Despite investment to 'improve working lives' and the health of NHS employees it has remained resistant to change in almost all ...
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Comment
Service redesign consultations
I worry we have lost the plot. In the last two weeks I have received four different letters from solicitors offering me advice on consultation. Post Derbyshire some colleagues have become obsessed with what we need to satisfy our legal friends. How grim. Have we really got to the point ...
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Turnaround consultants
I am sure Malcolm Lowe-Lauri's opinion column on management consultants must have struck a chord with PCT colleagues who have been subjected to the turnaround process in recent months (page 17, 5 October). Although the consultants input has been valuable in some areas the benefits were not apparent in many ...
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Comment
Efficiency indicators and Christie trust
Nick Edwards is quite right to suggest that efficiency indicators do not tell the story behind the numbers ( Click here to read the comment). So why did HSJcompound this by labelling Christie Hospital trust the worst in England ...