All Off Diary articles – Page 9
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CommunityBank to basics
Primary care trusts were unfazed when health select committee MPs slated their financial abilities earlier this year.
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CommunityWhite noise
Hot on the heels of its advice on what to do if approached by a sneezing piglet in a sombrero, the Department of Health has issued tips on how to survive the impending heatwave.
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CommunityBruce Almighty
We know everyone at the Department of Health is very busy, but NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh’s workload is getting absurd.
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CommunityAffair trial
A press release titled “Women in healthcare have more affairs” prompted bemused smiles all round last week, even from HSJ’s hardened hacks.
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Community
Political prudes
A general election is looming, in case you have not noticed, and Whitehall press officers have already started to use their civil service rule book as an excuse to not answer difficult questions - lest their response be interpreted as somehow “political”.
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Community
Barefaced cheek
We all know ambulance work can be tough, but last week a Surrey paramedic was particularly desperate for an after work tipple. After a Tesco worker refused to serve him a bottle of wine on the grounds that he was an emergency services employee in uniform, he stormed out of ...
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CommunityPig deal
It’s hard enough to take swine flu seriously since it sounds like an illness affecting nasty people, but endless viral emails and text messages aren’t doing much to improve its image. So far we’ve had people carted off in “hambulances”, victims breaking out in “rashers” and “farmacists” selling patients the ...
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CommunityUp in smoke
It would be enough to send even the most steel willed public health director reaching for the Marlboros. East Lancashire primary care trust last week ‘fessed up to having double-counted its smoking cessation figures for much of the past year.
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CommunitySex games
Here’s one for you from the seedy world of web analytics. Last week, 10 people (you know who you are) searched Google for “sex game” and landed right on HSJ’s community section. Rest assured, your trusted publication has not launched a raunchy microsite for NHS managers looking for a distraction ...
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Community
Friends only
At its annual reception this week, King’s Fund chief executive Niall Dixon announced its new “friends of the fund scheme”, giving those who sign up, among other things, the twice-yearly opportunity to “meet the experts” and access to its new friends’ lounge.
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Community
Tories jump the gun
You can’t fault their enthusiasm but it seems staff at the Conservative party’s Millbank HQ are getting a bit ahead of themselves.
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CommunityStubbed out
Anti-smoking lobbyists ASH wasted no time in condemning last week’s Budget, calling it “another missed opportunity to clamp down on smuggling”.
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CommunityNHS Choices does female ejaculation
Browsing around YouTube one evening, End Game stumbled upon (as you do) a video produced by NHS Choices on female ejaculation.
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CommunityThe NHS gets Twittering
End Game confesses to being slightly behind the times when it comes to Twitter, although the “microblogging” sensation has been taken up by none other than the HSJ news team (www.twitter.com/HSJnews) and editor (www.twitter.com/richardHSJ).
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Community
An April Fool made flesh
A year or two back HSJ ran a news story outlining how all NHS health professionals would be asked to practise what they preach and embark on weight management and exercise programmes so they could be a picture of health for their patients. The story sparked outrage among readers who ...
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Community
'The Three Metric-eers'
Last week HSJ had a story on how the poor Information Centre and DH received just 299 responses to a no doubt fascinating survey about which metrics should be used to measure quality of care.
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CommunityWord up
Readers may recall we recently exposed how far the DH is prepared to go to ensure that the word spread about world class commissioning is the rightly worded word. As we reported, many primary care trusts took the DH’s instructions for press releases literally, repeating them almost exactly. But surely ...