External contributors – Page 305
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Comment
Pay and workforce strategy 2008-11
There is currently great confusion among hospital doctors as to how best to respond to the many changes in employment conditions that are affecting our working conditions
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Comment
Chris Rudge on why the NHS needs to raise its game on transplants
'The NHS is spending nearly £190m a year on dialysis for the 6,278 patients waiting for a kidney transplant. If every one of these patients currently had a functioning transplant, the annual saving would be £160m'
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Comment
Information for GPs and search engines
Conservative MP Grant Shapps' 'Name and Shame' website is the latest publicity stunt to put patient appointment targets back into the headlines. While political parties continue to wrangle with one another, GPs must continue to run their practices under the significant pressure placed on them by these targets.
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Comment
NHS complaints
I read David Peat's article on lost baggage and fielding complaints with great interest. His comments in the penultimate paragraph are particularly encouraging.
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Comment
David Woodhead on lessons from Peru
'I met a group of local women who were trained in contraception and hygiene; they each had trained six women, who in turn were training others. The process had increased their confidence. And in the basement was a co-operative bakery which provided affordable bread but also made a profit.'
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Comment
HR managers must forge new staff model
The pay and workforce draft strategy documents seen by HSJpaint a picture of just how demanding 2007 will be for the human resources profession.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant: a primary care-bled NHS
‘Life carries on without GPs. In fact it’s a lot simpler’
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Comment
David Peat on lost baggage and fielding complaints
'I always try to acknowledge a complaint myself when it arrives on our doorstep, and I always sign off our response. It helps me keep in touch with patients' perceptions - their sense of grievance, injustice or perplexity.'
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Comment
Martin Pearson on warm glows and icy winds
'Directors and managers of today's organisations need to recognise that they are there not only to create cost-efficient and financially successful health businesses but also to lead services in a way that saves the world from further degradation and climate chaos'
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Comment
Ministerial support and local MPs
So the Home Secretary, Labour Party Chairman and Labour Chief Whip are all campaigning against the implementation of NHS policy in their constituencies. Hazel Blears will be able to give the threatened maternity unit in Salford meaningful and persuasive support, in due course, through Patricia Hewitt.
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Comment
Michael White on politics
'I do not think the Walsall trio, all nice chaps, will mind if I describe them as the Old Codgers, rather than the Three Musketeers'
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Comment
Media watch
The paper suggested that any 'sentient being' would be so aghast at the details of the Cornwall report that they would immediately want to turn to the sports pages
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Comment
Media watch
'Only The Guardianfelt Channel Five's screening of a Caesarean section on Sunday night warranted much attention'
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Comment
Michael White on politics
'Some Labour MPs suspect the NHS could have run more such centres just as well'
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Comment
Michael White on the 'demise' of nursing
Sometimes the political weather seems to follow the climatic version. So it was no surprise during the snow to read a mild-mannered press release about training patterns under the lurid headline that we face 'the demise of nursing' in Britain.
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Comment
Media Watch: Patricia Hewitt
'Hewitt should back off', moaned The Daily Express. Most newspapers reacted with some contempt to the health secretary's statement that it is 'best practice' for doctors to order individuals to lose weight or give up cigarettes before they are treated.
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Comment
Simon Stevens on five ideas to innovate
Fly-on-the-wall documentaries typically only benefit the fly. This is a truth probably now held to be self evident at Rotherham foundation trust. But, if one of the things to take away from the BBC programme Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS? was that ideally there would be more local initiative ...
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Comment
Patients' big chance to call the shots
Patients still feel they don't have a say in care decisions. But, says Vivienne Nathanson, a new bill gives them real influence - while Jessica Crowe emphasises how scrutiny committees will listen to their views
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Comment
Michael White on the Mental Health Bill
If the purpose of the bill is to improve supervised community treatment and to strengthen protection of the public where there is risk of violence, then vulnerable people must surely be encouraged to seek help - not to hide themselves away.
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Comment
Michael White on policy leaks
You can imagine my distress on returning from foreign parts to discover that things have been going on in the political health arena behind my back, much of it driven by a succession of top-level leaks to this very magazine.