Care and compassion in the NHS
The Health Service Ombudsman’s report on ten investigations into NHS care of older people has provoked an understandable, but wearingly familiar, wave of shock and media outrage. The Ombudsman is n...
We need to talk about frail older patients
How do you explain the actions of someone who ignores the plight of an older patient in a soiled bed? Or who fails to respond when a patient cannot reach a glass of water and has not eaten her meal...
Will hourly rounds help nurses to concentrate more on caring?
Like the curate’s egg, the Prime Minister’s announcement on improving the quality of nursing care on acute wards is good in parts. Given The King’s Fund’s and Health Foundation’s work on nursing ro...
Can the NHS learn from Mary Queen of Shops?
Mary Portas: ‘queen of shops’, government advisor on the high street and TV presenter. In Channel 4’s Secret Shopper, the no-nonsense retail guru took some of the nation’s biggest retailers to task...
The power of story telling
Last week saw the 2012 International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Paris, and day two started with an inspiring keynote from the President of the International Health Institute (IHI)...
Let's talk about palliative care
This month’s Health Affairs contains a touching narrative by Amy Berman, a US health foundation executive who, with the help of a doctor that respected her goals, chose palliative care over aggress...
Will the Friends and Family Test improve quality in the NHS?
There’s a tendency in the NHS to be ruthlessly target-driven. Often, it goes like this: a scandal or a public outcry leads ministers to demand improvement, a 'magic bullet' metric is identified, an...
Implementing Francis: lessons from Patient and Family-centred Care
As the NHS considers the findings of the public inquiry into events at Mid Staffordshire, few would disagree with Francis’ view that there is an urgent need to ensure that the NHS culture is one of...
Seven day working - a parent's view
There is now general recognition that the NHS needs to get to grips with seven day working. This has been reflected in the NHS Commissioning Board Planning Guidance, Everyone Counts: Planning for P...
Designing improvement around the people we care for
What does a ‘listening organisation’ look like? What benefits can it bring to our patients and to our staff? The more we involve patients, the more we make their experience of care better. We can i...
