RECENT NEWS

A report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) claims that staff health and wellbeing in the NHS is ‘too often seen as an optional extra’ and highlights the fact that less than two thirds of Trusts (65%) have a staff health and wellbeing plan in place.

GAMA Healthcare has announced a new clinical research and education department. Heading up this new division will be a new clinical director, Martin Kiernan, who joined GAMA on 1 April 2015. Martin has worked in the field of infection prevention and control (IPC) for 25 years, most recently as former nurse consultant in infection prevention at Southport and Ormskirk NHS Trust in the North-West of England.

The coalition government will leave office with health services under significant strain and a real risk that patient care will suffer as the NHS heads towards a deficit, according to a major assessment of the NHS under the coalition published by The King’s Fund.

The Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015, which aims to improve safety and quality of care, has received Royal Assent. Among the measures introduced by the act is a duty on health and adult social care providers to share information about a person’s care with other health and care professionals. This means that doctors and other professionals providing a person’s care and treatment will have the information they need so they can treat patients more effectively.

A UK company working with hospitals to prevent thousands of deaths by predicting and preventing acute kidney injury (AKI) has won a national Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition to scale its technology across the health service.

Eastwood Park is now taking bookings for the second year of its hospital engineering apprentice summer school, at its specialist training facility in Gloucestershire.

A recent study by Grassi et al, published in the Journal of Clinical & Tranlational Endocrinology, has concluded that blood glucose control in diabetes patients who inject insulin can be improved through better injection technique, which includes switching patients to 4 mm pen needles.

Very low mammographic breast density worsens the prognosis of breast cancer, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. Disease free survivals as well as overall life expectancies were significantly shorter in women with very low density breasts in comparison to women with high density breast tissue.

A project which identifies people with progressive chronic kidney disease (CKD) earlier and improves access to treatment and patient outcomes has received £400,000 funding for expansion nationwide. The project is being led by the medical research charity Kidney Research UK, with funding from the Health Foundation.

A new report from The King’s Fund has called for fundamental changes in how health services are commissioned, paid for and regulated to deliver the vision set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View. The Forward View has been endorsed by all three main political parties and will set the agenda for NHS reform in the next parliament.

Most women (85%) would back the idea of more frequent breast screening if they are at higher genetic risk of developing breast cancer, according to research published by The Breast. Fewer women (60%) would be happy to be screened less often if they were found to be at lower risk.

The ‘time of year’ lottery faced by patients needing a knee or hip replacement on the NHS became worse in 2014, according to data from the Medical Technology Group. It suggests that timing is more critical than ever in determining how soon patients receive treatment.

The Wellcome Trust is working with the Government Office of Life Sciences to take forward a review that aims to transform the speed and efficiency that new medicines and technologies are adopted by the NHS and benefit patients.

Aquilant Endoscopy, the exclusive provider of Fujifilm endoscopy equipment in the UK, has been awarded City & Guilds accreditation for its endoscope care and maintenance course.

Varian Medical Systems has announced that it has been selected to equip and service two new national proton therapy centres in England with the Varian ProBeam proton therapy system. Under a public tender, Varian was selected as the preferred supplier to provide equipment and service to operate two three-room centres to be constructed in London and Manchester in a contract valued at up to £80 million. Varian expects to conclude and sign the contract and book the equipment portion of the order in the summer.

Dr Ruth May, a former NHS theatre sister and chief nurse, is joining the health sector regulator Monitor. She has been appointed to the role of nursing director – a key post within Monitor’s patient and clinical engagement team. In this role she will complement the clinical advice provided by Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor, Monitor’s medical director and executive director of patient and clinical engagement.

Medway NHS Foundation Trust has agreed an enhanced buddy arrangement with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, which will support the new leadership team at Medway to improve the performance of the hospital.

The most common type of ovarian cancer is more deadly if it consists of a patchwork of different groups of cells, according to a Cancer Research UK study published in PLOSMedicine.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) does not protect post-menopausal women against cardiovascular disease and may increase risk of stroke, according to a recent study. Research, published in the Cochrane Library, looked at data from more than 40,000 women across the world.

Identifying loss of dignity and lack of respectful treatment as preventable harms in healthcare, researchers at Johns Hopkins have taken on the task of defining and ensuring respectful care in the intensive care unit (ICU). Their novel, multi-method approach is presented in a dedicated supplement to the journal Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics.