RECENT NEWS

In 2006, The King’s Fund launched an independent inquiry into the safety of maternity services. The report from that enquiry, Safe Births: Everybody’s business, made a series of recommendations about how the safety of maternity care could be improved.

Rare side-effects of new cancer drugs, particularly potential heart damage, are being under-reported in medical literature, according to academics in the US. They have called for ‘urgent reform’ and standardisation of the measurements of possible side-effects during clinical trials.

Following the success in Bournemouth over the last two years, Infection Prevention 2012 is set to take place at the ACC in Liverpool, from 1-3 October.

A report from Macmillan Cancer Support would suggest that older cancer patients often do not receive the same amount of treatment as younger patients due to an assumption that they would be unable to cope with the treatment.

Commenting on the international RN4CAST study, which looks at the nursing workforce and patient outcomes and recently published in the British Medical Journal, Dr Peter Carter chief executive and general secretary, at the Royal College of Nursing, said that the findings were ‘hugely significant’ and provided more compelling evidence that nursing numbers and the working environment have a direct relation to quality of care and patient experience.

Playing music in the operating theatre reduces anxiety and could improve healing time for patients undergoing operations under a local anaesthetic, concludes a recent paper published in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Read the latest issue of The Clinical Services Journal in digital format, on the enhanced website: www.clinicalservicesjournal.com

Three organisations have been shortlisted for this year’s Shared Learning Awards out of around 60 entries from across the NHS, local authorities, and the voluntary and private sectors.

An update to the guideline on prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections (HCAI’s) in primary and community care has been published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Tourists who have visited a malaria-infected country and are over the age of 65 are almost 10 times more likely to die from the disease than those who are aged 18-35, according to a study published by the British Medical Journal.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has updated its guidance for the NHS on a procedure which avoids open heart surgery to replace a diseased heart valve.

An independent provider of neurophysiology tests for the NHS, Bespoke Healthcare, has established what it believes is the first dedicated Intra-operative Monitoring (IOM) service in the UK with the launch of a new division.

A scheme developed to cut the high costs of repairing surgical instruments has been highly commended at an award ceremony after leading to huge savings for an NHS Trust.

The Stroke Improvement National Audit Programme (SINAP), commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) and run by the Royal College of Physicians’ Stroke Programme, shows that 8% of patients received clot-busting treatment (thrombolysis) following a stroke, up from only 1% in the 2008 audit.

A test for West Nile Virus (WNV) is to be introduced for certain blood donors in England and North Wales. Blood from donors who have returned from countries where WNV is prevalent will now be tested.

Scientists have found that a type of bacteria found in the mouth could cause blood clots and a life-threatening heart condition if it escapes into the blood stream.

New figures show that cancer waiting times targets in Scotland continue to be met.

A new report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) recommends that all hospital doctors, not just palliative care doctors and geriatricians, must be supported to improve the care they give to patients at the end of their lives.

Nearly 1.9 million women aged 45 and over were screened for breast cancer in England in 2010-11, according to recent Health and Social Care Information Centre figures.

Two reports published by The King’s Fund have highlighted how frail older people are being exposed to unacceptable standards of care in hospital because of a lack of continuity of care.