RECENT NEWS

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) has confirmed the continuation of the National Oesophagogastric Cancer Audit. It has been funded for another three years, with an expectation for it to continue beyond this period.

The annual Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) congress and exhibition AfPP 2011 will take place at Bournemouth International Centre from 19 to 21 October.

Poor handover between doctors, nurses and multidisciplinary teams is a common cause of error in hospitals, and is a preventable cause of patient harm.

A recent official report on NHS performance shows that continuing improvements are being made. The Quarter 4 report sets out NHS quality and financial performance between January and March 2011.

New research suggests that hundreds of people who take statins to reduce their risk of having a heart attack or stroke, could be at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs now make up nearly a fifth of all medicines prescribed for heart and circulatory disease, according to new statistics. There are more than 52 million prescriptions for lipid-lowering drugs in England each year.

BMA chairman of Council, Dr Hamish Meldrum, warned of tough times ahead as he set out the key challenges for the NHS in his opening speech to the BMA’s annual conference.

20,800 hospital admissions in England over a 12 month period were for people recorded as having a fall involving a bed, figures from The NHS Information Centre have shown.

Studies indicate that about 30% of the population in the UK suffer from sportrelated injuries. With increasing focus on sports and wellness, sports injuries are set to increase in number.

BritishMedicalJobs.com has seen a marked shift in demand for healthcare staff over the 12 months since the Coalition Government took office, with a 55% increase in demand for Locum vacancies and a comparative 55% boost in the number of online applications.

According to the results of new research people aged 16 to 30 years have the poorest understanding of ways to avoid skin cancer and are more likely to get sunburnt than older age groups, new research shows.

Six new collaborative research and development projects are set to receive nearly £6 million of Government funding in the latest stage of a five year initiative to ensure that the UK is a world leader in the development of personalised medicine.

NICE, in partnership with the Health Protection Agency (HPA), is developing advice on the prevention and control of healthcare associated infections (HCAIs) in secondary care settings as part of a pilot project. Draft advice identifies the organisational characteristics, arrangements and practices that indicate whether a secondary care Trust is effectively preventing and controlling HCAIs.

A new Superhero has just emerged in the battle to beat the bugs – Des, the knight in shining armour and the champion of hand hygiene has just been unveiled by schulke. Des is the standard bearer for desderman – schulke’s rapid acting hand disinfection gel, which is ranked number one by NHS Supply Chain.

Although Pseudomonas and other infections have long been accepted as an endemic hazard for patients in intensive care and other high dependency units, the last decade has seen increasing worldwide recognition of the role of water in the transmission of these nosocomial organisms. SUSAN PEARSON reports.

A charity consortium has been formed to aid the development of the latest version of a paediatric online training programme for use by healthcare professionals across the UK.

A campaign to raise awareness of the work of Children’s Hospices is being backed by Simon Cowell, patron of Children’s Hospices UK.

A new unit designed to help medical scientists translate their research into effective treatments for patients has been set up at The University of Nottingham.

A National Institute of Health-funded international study has found that people infected with HIV reduced the risk of transmitting the virus to their sexual partners by taking oral antiretroviral medicines when their immune systems were relatively healthy.

New research suggests that gently heating cancer cells could enhance the effects of experimental new drugs. Previous studies have shown that heating tumours can improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation, but it was not known why.