BOOKS ETC

Published: 14/08/2003, Volume II3, No. 5868 Page 20

A to Zs of healthcare management can be valuable debunkers of jargon, but Lyn Whitfield sees even the most recent guides struggle to stay contemporary

Healthcare Management Dictionary By Anne Phillips Publisher: Radcliffe Medical Press. ISBN: 1857758021.£21.95.

www. radcliffe-oxford. com

The NHS in England 2003-04 Pocket guide (fifth edition) By Peter Merry Publisher: NHS Confederation. ISBN: 1859470912.£12.95.

www. nhsconfed. org/publications

NHS jargon drives many to despair. The National and Primary Care Trust Development Programme has just posted on its website a plea for NHS staff to use 'real-world language', rather than 'professional speak'.

This is just the latest of many attempts, none of which seem to have made much impact, which is why guides like the Healthcare Management Dictionary find a market.

Author Anne Phillips acknowledges in her preface that her book - which runs from A is for Acas, to Z is for zero tolerance - is really intended for primary care.

This may explain some of the selections but, as tends to be the case with books of this type, the author's picks can seem arbitrary.Why is there an entry for the Department of Health's Quarry House (Leeds) but not Richmond House (London), for example?

Inevitably, the entries also skate over controversies, are occasionally wrong and are sometimes out of date. An EPR is not an electronic medical record, for example, and there is no entry for the new integrated care records services.

The dictionary also misses NatPaCT, although some of its predecessors get a mention.

The NHS Confederation's pocket guide to The NHS in England 2003-04, written by former HSJ editor Peter Merry, includes NatPaCT in its acronym buster.

This follows a short but useful A to Z (or strictly Y, for 'you and your services') of the NHS and chapters on the history and organisation of the NHS, strategy, quality, finance, human resources and so on.

General managers are likely to find this format more familiar and useful than the one followed in the dictionary; and good contents pages help navigation.

But the guide still has problems keeping up to date.

The information chapter, for example, is written around information for health, an IT strategy superseded by the national programme for NHS IT - although it does manage to discuss the difference between EPR and ICRS.