Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Hospitals 'losing their compassion'


Hospitals 'losing their compassion'
Tuesday, December 30 09:06 am
Print Story
NHS hospitals are losing their compassion, the head of a health thinktank has warned.
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the King's Fund, blamed work pressures, shorter stays in hospital and the greater complexity of medical challenges for staff behaving in a less feeling way.
He said compassion should be a key priority for the boards of every NHS hospital.
The draft constitution of the NHS identifies compassion as one of the six values of the service, explaining: "We find the time to listen and talk when it is needed, make the effort to understand, and get on and do the small things that mean so much - not because we are asked to but because we care."
The King's Fund is piloting a project in a number of hospitals to try to encourage staff to focus on being compassionate.
Under the "Schwartz round" scheme, staff from different disciplines get together once a month to discuss areas where they have experienced difficulties.
Mr Dickson said: "I have very little doubt that we've seen a deterioration in the level of compassion that is shown by staff to patients.
"The board of every hospital should be looking at this as one of their top priorities - what is it like for someone who's coming in to be treated, and how can we improve that experience?
"It's to do with staff facing very difficult situations - because patients are sicker and hospital stays are shorter - rather than them all turning into nasty people.
"If we can't get compassion into our healthcare, the system is failing. It's as fundamental as that."

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

NHS agency staff 'get £200 an hour'


NHS agency staff 'get £200 an hour'
Saturday, January 3 12:37 pm

NHS hospitals are paying agency staff almost £200 an hour to cover shifts, the Tories have said.




Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed some staff are paid hourly rates equivalent to salaries worth hundreds of thousands a year and agencies are taking large "cuts" in return for supplying workers.
The Tories said NHS organisations across England were paying agency staff "hugely inflated" hourly rates to cover gaps in normal cover.
The Party asked all NHS trusts to provide details of the highest amount they paid to an agency worker between May and October 2008 and received a response rate of more than 70 per cent.
Whipps Cross University Hospitals NHS Trust said it paid £188 an hour for an anaesthetics medical consultant - equivalent to an annual salary of £366,000.
Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust paid £167 for an A&E doctor, equivalent to £326,000 a year, and Dorset Primary Care Trust paid £158 an hour for a prison GP, which would amount to £307,000 a year.
Most organisations were unable to say how the hourly rate was split between the worker and the agency, but some agencies were found to be taking large cuts.
Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust paid £116 per hour for a nurse but the agency took £50 (43 per cent), and Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust paid £94 per hour for a nurse but the agency took £40 (43 per cent).
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley, said: "It's incredible that agency staff can be paid such high hourly rates when jobs are being cut at the same time. This is typical of the waste that's occurred under this Labour Government."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said the Government was spending less on agency staff year on year.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Boy died after being refused visit


Boy died after being refused visit
1 hour 16 mins ago

A 12-year-old boy who died of a mystery illness would have lived if a doctor had visited him, his mother claims.



Daniel Farr, from Tilehurst, Reading, was pronounced dead on arrival at the Royal Berkshire Hospital on Sunday.
The Year 8 pupil at Prospect School in Tilehurst was taken ill after a friend's birthday party on Friday evening and the sickness continued into Saturday morning, with Daniel vomiting and complaining of side and chest pains.
His mother Rosemary Farr, 51, called her GP practice but the surgery was closed for the weekend and her call was transferred to the Westcall Operations Centre at Wokingham Hospital, Berkshire.
She told a newspaper: "They said he had probably pulled a small muscle and advised me to give him paracetamol. I just trusted that they would know best so I followed their advice."
When Daniel's symptoms failed to improve, Mrs Farr contacted the centre again and was called back by a doctor.
Mrs Farr said: "I told him Daniel was no better and asked him to visit. He said they did not do home visits and told me if I was that concerned I should take him to the hospital myself."
Daniel was eventually taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital by paramedics, where he was pronounced dead.
His mother added: "Daniel could still be alive if one of the doctors had come out to see him."
In a statement, Berkshire West Primary Care Trust said: "We are all extremely saddened by this very tragic event and our thoughts are primarily with the family at this time. We are currently undertaking a thorough investigation of all the circumstances."
A post-mortem examination is to be carried out to find out how Daniel died.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

'More drugs' for cancer treatments


'More drugs' for cancer treatments
Friday, December 26 11:57 am
The NHS drugs watchdog is to take a more flexible approach to the issuing of treatments which can prolong the life of people with terminal illnesses, it was has been announced.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), said that new guidelines to be published next week would extend the range of cancer treatments available on the NHS.
Nice has come under fire in recent months for refusing to allow some cancer treatments - which can extend the lives of sufferers for weeks or months - on the grounds that they are not cost-effective.
Sir Michael said that Nice had been consulting on proposals which recognised the particular importance people attached to the extra time such drugs could give them.
"We appreciate these extra weeks and months can be very special," he said.
"We are proposing to provide our advisory bodies with supplementary advice in these sort of circumstances which will have the effect of extending the threshold range of what we would normally regard as being cost-effective."
He said that the new guidance, which will be issued on January 2 with immediate effect, would concentrate on treatments for less common cancers.
"We are not proposing to extend this to all conditions. Frankly, it would cost the Health Service hundreds of millions of pounds if we were to do that," he said.
"We believe that the pharmaceutical industry should be prepared, in some circumstances, to lower the cost for common conditions where the volume of patients is greater so that the returns on their investment can be met by a large number of people.
"That is why were are concentrating on less common cancers because we recognise that with the less common cancers and less common conditions, the development costs are about the same as they are for common ones but because the population is smaller they need to charge more for each patient."
Sir Michael said that Nice was taking steps to speed up the approval process for new treatments, but he warned that they would take time to implement.
"What our ambition is, is to make sure that guidance is available to the Health Service within three to six months of a new product going on the market," he said.
"We are putting these arrangements in hand. It won't happen immediately, I'm afraid, because there is a backlog but we will be getting there within the next 12 to 18 months."


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Study backs deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's

Study backs deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's
Yesterday, 09:02 pm Will Dunham
Print Story
Deep brain stimulation dramatically improves Parkinson's disease symptoms such as trembling and slowness of movement, offering hope to many with the incurable ailment, researchers said on Tuesday. Skip related content
Six months of deep brain stimulation with a device made by Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc led to better quality of life and 4-1/2 additional hours per day of good motor functioning for Parkinson's patients, but did not come without risks, the researchers said.
The small electrical device is implanted surgically in the chest, with wires leading to electrodes in the brain. It sends electrical signals to brain areas that control movement.
One of the 121 Parkinson's patients in the study who got deep brain stimulation, or DBS, died from bleeding in the brain caused by a ruptured blood vessel after the surgery.
And compared to the 134 patients in the study who received only standard medical treatment, those getting DBS were 3.8 times more likely to have a "serious adverse event" such as a post-surgical infection. Most were quickly resolved, the researchers said.
But motor functioning improved for 71 percent of the DBS patients. Their quality of life -- like carrying out daily activities, mobility and emotional well-being -- also rose.
"The study provides the medical community with the highest class of evidence for the benefits of deep brain stimulation for properly selected patients," Dr. William Marks, a University of California, San Francisco neurologist who helped lead the study, said in a telephone interview.
DBS may help patients whose symptoms are not well controlled by drugs, Marks said.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"MAGNIFICENT BENEFITS"
Parkinson's disease is a brain disorder in which nerve cells in the brain that control muscle movement die, causing trembling, stiffness of the limbs and trunk, slowness of movement and impaired balance and coordination.
There is no cure and drugs used to control symptoms can lose their effectiveness over time or cause bad side effects, often leaving patients desperate to find a new approach.
Sharon Pederson, 51, a Northern California woman who got DBS in the study, said it restored her quality of life. "The bottom line for me is that without hope, you have nothing to go for with Parkinson's," Pederson said in a telephone interview arranged by Medtronic.
Deep brain stimulation was approved in 2002 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat Parkinson's, but only a small percentage of patients get it.
Marks, who has worked as a consultant to Medtronic, said DBS does not cure the disease or prevent it from worsening over time, and does not improve non-motor symptoms such as thinking, memory or speech problems. In fact, those who got DBS in the study had slightly lower performance on cognitive tests.
While the treatment is not appropriate for everyone with Parkinson's disease, "a surgery done on the right patient by the right team can have magnificent benefits that extend beyond what can be achieved with medicines alone," said Dr. Michael Okun of the National Parkinson Foundation.
The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and National Institutes of Health, with some additional funding from Medtronic.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090106/thl-uk-parkinsons-brain-top-acc9995.html
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

Australian researchers claim breakthrough on dengue fever


Australian researchers funded by US billionaire Bill Gates Friday claimed a breakthrough which could help in the fight against dengue fever by stopping the often deadly disease in its tracks.

University of Queensland researchers said they have successfully infected the mosquito which spreads the tropical disease with a bacterium which halves its 30-day lifespan, thereby reducing its ability to transmit dengue to humans.
Scientists hope their work will help halt the spread of the painful and debilitating disease which affects millions of people each year.
"The key is that really only very old mosquitos are the only ones that are able to transmit the disease," said researcher Professor Scott O'Neill.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090102/thl-australian-researchers-claim-breakth-edb91f1.html
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Bush has scan and injection for painful shoulder


Bush has scan and injection for painful shoulder
Monday, December 22 09:46 pm
Print Story
U.S. President George W. Bush had a scan done on his painful left shoulder and was given a cortisone injection on Monday but said he was in "good shape" and could still hurl a baseball at high speed. Skip related content
Related photos / videos
U.S. President George W. Bush walks out of the Oval Office at the White House in …More Enlarge photo
Bush had a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) check while he was at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington visiting patients who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Following a review of the results of the MRI, President Bush received a cortisone shot for his left shoulder," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. "No further medical action is expected to be necessary at this time."
Bush, 62, had been "experiencing some pain," Johndroe said.
Cortisone shots are generally given to reduce inflammation.
Johndroe quoted Dr. Richard Tubb, the president's physician, as saying it was "probably just a little bit of wear and tear of an active individual."
Asked by reporters how his shoulder was doing, Bush insisted he was in "good shape" and joked that he could pitch about an "80 mile-an-hour fastball."
Johndroe said the shoulder pain had not affected Bush's ability to do his job and that the president had gone biking over the weekend.
(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; editing by John O'Callaghan)


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)