EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS BLOGS
January 18 Quality or quantity?
The concern over changing the way nursing training is conducted comes down to the demand for a large pool of trained nurses and the need for those nurses to be the best possible candidates to pro- vide quality patient care.
Following damning reports on some nurses’ apparent lack of compassion, the NHS is seeking to focus on a smaller number of trainees, in order to improve the teaching they offer these students, it says.
Obviously it would be better to have both quality and quantity where health professionals are concerned, but if that is unachiev- able then the focus must be on quality. Mistreatment of patients due to poor training will only lead to further problems that a dwin- dling supply of well-trained nurses must then tackle.
If the current approach is not working, and evidence suggests it is not, then something needs to change. Hopefully this teaching reform will have the desired effect and produce nurses who sincerely care about their patients.
January 13
Remember the time The healthcare project at Bradford
suicide – would not be eligible. It is a complicated problem.
Obviously requiring someone to have full mental capabilities would help to ensure that coercion into suicide was avoided.
Setting rules in the first place pre- supposes that someone has the right to decide who may die and who must continue to live.
At the moment, even with such a large amount of evidence and con- sideration, the tangled ethics of assisted suicide continue to block any legislative change.
December 19 The bigger picture
Royal Infirmary shows how small changes to patients’ environment can have a significant impact on their wellbeing.
Giving patients with dementia ‘memory boxes’ to keep by their beds has helped them to locate which bed is theirs, promote rec- ollection of past experiences and encourage greater interaction with staff as there is a fixed, personal topic for conversations.
As well as the practical benefits of keeping track of patients, reducing the amount of people wandering the corridors and limiting anxiety, the unquantifiable improvement
to their quality of life must be wel- comed.
Innovative ideas such as this treat patients with cognitive difficulties as people, rather than cases where it is easier to simply give up.
January 5 Dying with dignity?
A year-long inquiry into assisted suicide has reported that there is a strong case for legalisation, and that a strict set of rules could ensure there was no abuse of the practice.
However it is this set of rules that produces the most problems with such a contentious issue. The cri- teria recommended include re- quiring the patient to be over 18, of sound mind and within 12 months of death, as well as able to take the medication themselves, instead of being administered by a doctor.
This means that most patients with dementia, locked-in syndrome and those lacking the mobility to self- medicate – the groups it could be argued are most at need of assisted
The EU directive to cut energy consumption is not designed sole- ly to harm the NHS. Encouraging countries to reduce their energy consumption is a positive and nec- essary measure that must be taken to ensure a cleaner environment and ultimately lower costs.
The NHS Confederation is arguing that the proposals will damage the NHS, and cost millions of pounds to implement, as it would require a change from previously planned programmes to new measures.
This will be difficult to achieve and it will limit the ways organisations can implement measures, but this may be the price to pay for such benefits.
Proposals for rules across the EU will never focus on a single coun- try, or their particular problems with an individual public body. There are too many variables to please everyone and so a compro- mise must be reached.
The UK, and the NHS should ac- cept this and consider whether our costs outweigh the benefits this di- rective could bring across Europe.
For more like this, sign up to the free weekly NHE newsletter, featuring health service news, interviews and comment. Sign up at
www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/free-weekly-alerts.htm
14 | national health executive Jan/Feb 12
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84