Showing posts tagged with: Great Britain

What an amazing Summer of sport for Great Britain.

Routes Director, Andrew Healing, and his Family were lucky enough to have been at the Paralympics - amazing event, amazing people.

Inspired? No question about it - the children are loving it! 

Hats off to the organisers and the superb gamesmakers who have done a brilliant job.

What an amazing Summer of sport for Great Britain.

The consequences of a busy day

Cast your mind back to 27 February. It was a Monday morning. The weather was pretty mild for the end of winter.

The day before Liverpool had won the Carling Cup football final, while the Sun on Sunday had just been launched.

For the NHS, it was to be the busiest day of the year.

The bed occupancy rate nationally was 92% - seven percentage points above the recognised safe level - according to an analysis by monitoring body Dr Foster.

Nearly half of the 145 trusts in England reported a bed occupancy rate of 95% or above.

There is nothing to suggest anything specific went wrong that day.

But what is certain is that staff working on the wards of hospitals up and down the country would have been struggling to keep up.

Quality of care

When bed occupancy tips the 85% mark the system goes into overdrive - and things start to give.

They may have to wait that little bit longer before their call bell is answered. There may not be enough staff to help the frail at meal times.

Discharge planning can go awry as hospitals become desperate to free up beds. That can mean they turf people out before they are ready or before the support in the community from district nursing teams and social care is in place.

Because of the shortage of beds, patients can find themselves moved around from ward to ward, inevitably finding themselves in unsuitable surroundings.

On their own, these things seem relatively minor, but added together they create the sort of care that leaves people feeling aggrieved and which, at its worse, is unsafe.

For the full article click here.

NHS facing 'tough savings challenge'

The NHS in England has been warned it must raise its game if it is to hit the ambitious savings targets it has been set and maintain services to patients.

The health service has been asked to find efficiencies of up to £20bn by 2015 to cope with rising demands.

The National Audit Office found it had made a good start, achieving virtually all its forecast £5.9bn in 2011-12.

But the report warned the push would get harder, as the easiest savings had been made first.

To read the full article click here.

How to beat a cold in just 24 hours

When the dreaded  lurgy strikes, a day in bed can seem like the only option. But with Christmas just  around the corner, few of us have the time - or inclination - to put up with a  hacking cough or aching muscles for long.

Now, help is at  hand from a leading expert. Here, Professor Ron Eccles from the Common Cold  Centre at Cardiff University tells MailOnline how to beat the bug in just one  day...

To read the full article click here.

Health regulator problems 'persist'

The health and care regulator for England has yet to win the public's confidence, according to a report by a committee of MPs.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) was only created in 2009 but has been under fire virtually ever since.

The House of Commons' Health Select Committee said the CQC had still failed to grasp its primary role to ensure patient safety.

To read the full article click here.