What’s the deal with Resuscitation?
It’s hard to miss this topic which has exploded in the media again this week. The lady in front of me on the bus home on Wednesday was reading the Daily Mail. The headline “Do you want us to let…
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80% of GP practices have one or more GPs suffering from burnout
Are you in despair for your future in General Practice – Final Report In 2013, my practice advertised in the British Medical Journal, on two occasions, for a salaried GP with a view to partnership. This recruitment process resulted in…
Patient centred care: Rhetoric and reality
Published first by the excellent Centre for Health and the Public Interest Patient-centred care is high up the political and policy agendas, with Jeremy Hunt announcing last month, One year on from Francis, my top priority remains to support you in creating a…
We need to have a chat about the NHS
/ June 29, 2015 at 8:36 PM
1,060 views
Lately, I've noticed - indeed been on the receiving end - of a new phenomenon. Suddenly, all over middle England, those drifting gently to the right of a fairly rightish centreground keep popping up on my timelines or in my…
Frontline Friday 19th July 2013: Our favourite frontline blogs this week
Here’s our list of ten frontline blogs we’ve particularly liked from the week of 15th July 2013. Let us know which posts we’ve missed and which other bloggers we should be following for next week’s list. Benefit cap bullshit Alex…
Police mental health
I am aware that several forces are reviewing, revising or writing afresh their internal policies on mental ill-health for staff. Policies about a force’s duty of care towards their police officers and employees. There are various reasons why this is…
Lobbying MP over new NHS rules
/ June 29, 2015 at 8:34 PM
1,728 views
The new NHS laws have many NHS workers and patients worried (including me!) about the direction of travel of the English NHS. So it is time to write (again) to my MP asking him to support and defend a publicly…
Are we human…?
What’s the NHS for? Can part of its role be to address more than just medical needs? So much of the leading practice seems to be about about trying to re-inject something else – humanity – back into organisations and…
Communication at the end of life
I call it ‘the grim reaper talk’. By this slightly tongue in cheek phrase I refer to the vital timely episode of communication I have with a patient’s family when we as the multidisciplinary team feel someone has entered the…
Expensive, unhealthy and dangerous
/ June 29, 2015 at 8:32 PM
858 views
A comment heard outside here, prompts me to expand a little on some misconceptions about sending people to places like Winterbourne View. Placements like these are often much more expensive than decent community care or local support, it isn't usually…
The drive to improve five year cancer survival – an NHS priority, or political folly?
/ June 29, 2015 at 8:32 PM
1,747 views
In the original Johnny English film, Rowan Atkinson’s hapless spy performs a flawless daredevil penetration into the heart of a hostile occupied building. Dropped by helicopter onto the roof, his use of grappling irons is exemplary, his ability to move…
The ‘Red Tape Challenge’ does Health and Social Care
We all knew it would come in time. This wonderful government idea to slash all that awful ‘red tape’ that stops people doing what the government otherwise would stop them doing finally arrives at Health and Social Care. I had a…
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Sometimes knowing when to stop is one of the hardest things in medicine. I find looking after a patient list so hard because I have lots of sick patients who sometimes die. It's difficult to know how far to go…
Andrew Lansley is gone, but his closed approach to policy-making is likely to continue
We have a new secretary of state for health - but not apparently a new policy for health, or a change in the way that health policy is made. The way to improve the NHS is apparently the same as it…
From the archive: Tax avoidance ‘at the very core’ of firms bidding for major NHS contracts
/ March 24, 2015 at 8:40 PM
1,451 views
Many of the major private health companies bidding for NHS services have tax avoidance measures ‘at the core of their activities’, research from Unite the Union has revealed. The shocking report exposes ten major health companies including the four biggest…
From the archive: How to save the NHS
NHS SOS Edited by Raymond Tallis and Jacky Davis, Oneworld publications Available from Keep Our NHS Public There are few things that staff can agree on in an organisation as vast and multi-cultural as the NHS, but there are two fundamental…
From the archive: NHS SOS
/ July 27, 2013 at 8:36 PM
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It has taken a year in the making but I was so proud to see the book I had contributed to on a shelf at WHSmith the other day. Last year a few of us sat down and realised we…
From the archive: Whistleblowing about private providers will be discouraged in the new privatising NHS
Regular readers of my blogs will know of my enthusiasm for the publications of the House of Commons Library, which give independent guidance to MPs in all sorts of things, but often it is aimed at situations where they are…
From the archive: Policymaking shouldn’t be a bully pulpit
How we treat other people often reflects how we are treated, and in many organisations this gets established at the top. Workplaces with assholic chief executives easily turn into environments where bullying, passive-aggressiveness and small 'p' politics are rife; once modelled by leaders, these behaviours can become…
