All articles by MARK CRAIL – Page 3
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News
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The most comprehensive and authoritative guide to prescription medicines in use in this country began to offer open access to the public as well as healthcare professionals recently, with a pharmaceutical database listing 2,500 medicines and the 15,000 changes made every year to drug licences.
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News
WEBWATCH
Do you sometimes sit in meetings wondering what your colleagues are droning on about? Do you ever wonder what on earth you're talking about? 'The SAFF, JIPs and PCIPs are interdependent elements in the planning process and are an integral part of producing the HImP.' In all honesty, does that ...
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WEBWATCH
Few healthcare organisations in this country have managed to create the sort of virtual professional communities to which the Internet seems so well suited. It will come - but first people have to conquer the reticence that leaves so many discussion forums with enough significant silences to fill a Harold ...
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Staff appraisal, proclaimed management guru Tom Peters some time back in the last century, is the number one management problem in the US. 'It takes the average employee (manager or non-manager) six months to recover from it.' Anyone think that doesn't apply to the UK or to what we've seen ...
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In an era replete with New Age quacks and frauds who assert the curative and health-enhancing benefits of anything from gemstones to the laying on of hands, not to mention their innate superiority over 'western' medicine, it is worthwhile recalling the long, hard slog of intellectual effort which laid the ...
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'I've heard that it is dangerous to take Prozac, and smoke marijuana, or take other illegal drugs. Does anyone know if that is true?' asks Sara. According to RxList, which bills itself as 'the internet drug index', the anti-depressant is the fifth most commonly prescribed drug in the US - ...
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With brand new medical schools springing up at Keele, Warwick and Durham, the Open University hammering on the door to demand admission and promises of thousands of new doctors, these are exciting times for medical education. If only those who run it could be bothered to communicate some of that ...
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Trusts' improved note handling 'good news'
Fewer than half of all trusts start outpatient clinics with a set of casenotes for every patient, according to an Audit Commission report published today.
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Thousands of nurses abandoned the wards last week and joined picket lines in a national strike over pay and conditions. Hospitals left with just emergency cover immediately cancelled many of their planned admissions and clinics, while some patients were sent home as pressure built up.
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So you want to undertake a systematic review of discharge planning to find out what really works. But how do you know someone else isn't already doing the same thing? In fact, they are: details are on the National Research Register along with information about 42,000 other research projects of ...
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Super Cooper
A rising star, with a political CV to kill for and a very New Labour marriage, Yvette Cooper has the perfect background for Blair's ministerial team. But the public health remit may not be easy, writes Mark Crail
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WEB WATCH
A tax on the poor, a tax on stupidity - the National Lottery has been called many things, lots of them uncomplimentary, and particularly so a few minutes after 8pm each Saturday. But with the New Opportunities Fund handing out used fivers by the wheelbarrow-load, could some in the NHS ...
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Slow start for PCT take-up
The first wave of primary care trusts, due to go live next April, may amount to just one 'demonstration site' in each of the eight English regions, according to HSJ sources.
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Crash, bang, wallop
The NHS Primary Care Group Alliance has smashed through the credibility barrier and is now prepared to push its weight around. Mark Crail braved its conference
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WEB WATCH
Are health action zones really at the cutting edge of public health as ministers intend? Or have they, as a leading Blairite think-tanker recently suggested, degenerated into test-beds for daft ideas dreamed up by civil servants and imposed on local people with the aid of endless central directives, rules and ...