RECENT NEWS

The fourth report of the BMA’s Cohort Study, which traces the career progression of 430 medical graduates who qualified in 2006, shows that junior doctors now spend more time carrying out administrative tasks than they do in formal training.

Radiotherapy specialist, Cancer Partners UK, is lobbying MPs and health officials about the “poor state of radiotherapy services in the UK”.

A Department of Health review of the National Programme for IT has concluded that a centralised, national approach is no longer required, and that a more locally-led plural system of procurement should operate, while continuing with national applications already procured.

Nearly a third of nurses are not confident that it would be noticed if a relative was malnourished when entering hospital, according to findings released as part of Age UK’s “Still Hungry to be Heard” campaign.

A conference on the Enhanced Recovery Programme, aimed at all members of the multidisciplinary team, is set to take place on Wednesday 10 November 2010, at 76 Portland Place, London.

The team at Full Support is re-doubling their efforts to rally support for their Think Pink range of garments. In March 2010, Full Support Healthcare partnered with Breast Cancer Care to launch a brand new range of surgical gowns and warm-up jackets to compliment their existing range, branded Think Pink.

London Health 2010,a one-day management conference aimed at CEOs, senior management personnel, and directors in the health service, being held on 3 November, 2010 at the capital’s Business Design Centre, will include a keynote speech by current Health Minister, the Rt. Hon Andrew Lansley CBE MP.

People diagnosed with breast, bowel and ovarian cancers and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma are today twice as likely to survive for at least 10 years as those diagnosed in the early 1970s according to new figures released by Cancer Research UK.

Almost 10,000 NHS posts in England, the equivalent of a large teaching hospital, have been earmarked for cuts, the Royal College of Nursing has revealed. The figure contradicts the assertion that frontline services will be protected.

A new cutting-edge cancer centre dedicated to robotic surgery, cancer imaging and drug discovery has been launched in London.

Babies born at night or at the weekend are at greater risk of dying due to lack of oxygen (anoxia) than those born during normal working hours, Cambridge researchers have found.

A new pain relief implant using Wii-style technology for people with chronic nerve pain has been used in Scotland for the first time. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s Dr Gordon McGinn fitted the new “neurostimulator implant” under local anaesthetic at Glasgow’s New Victoria Hospital.

A report has named the UK as one of the worst developed countries in the world in terms of access to MS drugs – prompting the MS Society to call for an urgent update of the clinical guidelines for MS.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published its report into the GP out-of-hours provider, Take Care Now (TCN). The regulator’s investigation was triggered by the case of Mr David Gray, a patient killed by an overdose of 100 mg diamorphine in February 2008.

David Furness, the author of the Social Market Foundation’s major health report, has described Government’s plans to transfer billions of pounds from Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to GPs, to commission NHS services, as being “at best a waste of time, at worst a waste of money”.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has presented the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley with advice on new, national, evidence-based quality standards on the care and treatment of stroke,

Surgery for children faces a future skills crisis with sick children facing unnecessary delays for operations or travelling long distances for routine surgery unless co-ordinated action is taken now by the surgical profession and the NHS, the Royal College of Surgeons has warned.

The cervical cancer vaccine could prevent even more cases of the disease in England than previously thought, UK scientists have found. A study by scientists at the Health Protection Agency (HPA), the University of Manchester and the Manchester Royal Infirmary suggests that the vaccine could potentially reduce the number of cases each year from about 3,000 to less than 700.

An updated guide has been published by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) which describes steps junior doctors should follow in the event of a medical safety incident.

The numbers of patients who die following complex surgery to repair blocked or damaged blood vessels could be significantly reduced if the NHS recognised vascular surgery as a full specialty and organised care within hospitals accordingly.