Healthcare Useful Resources
From the Latest Legislation and Directives to Governence, Guidelines and research.
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Flu fighting - getting started
Your staff-facing seasonal flu vaccination campaign starts now.
This guide sets out what you need to do now to ensure that your campaign over the autumn and winter is successful. It will allow you to hit the ground running when national campaign materials are sent to you early in September 2011.
Download Publication here >>>
CDC report on Second external quality assurance scheme for Salmonella typing
ECDC’s external quality assurance (EQA) schemes are designed to identify areas for improvement in laboratory diagnostic and typing methods that are relevant for disease surveillance and to ensure the comparability of results between laboratories. In this scheme, the objective was to evaluate whether serotyping of Salmonella strains by different laboratories within and outside the European Union (28 laboratories are situated in the EU/EEA region) is carried out correctly and lead to similar results.
The results of the EQA scheme indicate that the testing laboratories, on average, accurately serotype Salmonella strains. There are a few remaining problematic areas, mainly in the typing of H antigens and comparability of antimicrobial susceptibility results – highlighting the continuous need for EQA schemes for Salmonella serotyping and the need to develop and implement standard antimicrobial susceptibility testing procedures and interpretation criteria across Europe.
Download the report here >>>
Chance to improve palliative care
Friday's publication of the palliative care funding review presents a crucial opportunity for the government to improve the experiences of adults and children at the end of life, and their families and carers. Although the vast majority of us would prefer to be cared for and die at home, in a care home, or in a hospice, the reality is that more than half of us die in hospital, often through avoidable and unnecessary emergency admissions. People need good palliative care, wherever they are. But we know that there are unacceptable inequities in access to and provision of care and support at the end of life. We need to close this gap.
At the heart of the review's recommendations is an acceptance that people at the end of their lives should be cared for and die in the place of their choice. The government must now move swiftly to implement the review's recommendation for a fair funding mechanism which will deliver better outcomes for people at the end of life – whatever their condition and wherever they are cared for – and better value for the NHS. The review's report and last Monday's report by the Dilnot commission provide the government with a critical opportunity that must not be squandered.
Download the final report click here.
If you could wave a magic wand and tomorrow something would be fixed in your care profession what would it be? Answers here please >>>
Counsel + Care: Advice and information for older people, their families and carers
About Counsel and Care
Counsel and Care is the national charity working with older people, their families and carers to get the best care and support. Established in 1954, Counsel and Care provides a high quality, in-depth advice service for older people, their families and carers.
How they can help you
Counsel and Care has a team of experienced advice workers available to talk to older people, their families and carers about the individual situations facing them, either as an older person themselves or as somebody providing care and support for an older person. They are able to provide tailored and personalised advice and information via pre-arranged telephone appointments or by email or letter.
Enquirers are welcome to use this service as often as they need to until their issues have been resolved as far as is possible – their advice workers keep case notes, so that picking up where an enquirer has got to in their actions following the last call to their advice service is made as easy as possible. They talk to people about both straightforward and complex care and support issues, whether they are in their own home, in hospital, in residential care or in any other care environment.
Their team is well versed in the related community care legislation and government policy. The kinds of issues they deal with regularly (and would be glad to have referred on to them) are:
- Care options, including staying in your own home, moving to housing with care and/or finding and paying for a care home
- Assessment process for care and the community care system generally
- Help in your own home and help to stay at home (housing maintenance and adaptations, for example)
- Going in to hospital, being in hospital and coming out of hospital + complaints about NHS treatment and care
- Assistance for carers, including financial support available
- Choosing a care home and the related financial issues (both for those who are self-funding and those who are not)
- Funding by local authorities, NHS Continuing Care; interim finance for self-funders, third party top ups
- Complaints about care at home or in a care home or other care setting – how to challenge decisions
Contact details
This advice service is available between 10am and 4pm, Monday to Friday
- Advice Line: telephone: 0845 300 7585, email: advice@counselandcare.org.uk
- Website www.counselandcare.org.uk
- Counsel and Care, Twyman House, 16 Bonny Street, London, NW1 9PG
ECDC: Excellence in prevention and control of infectious diseases – read the new corporate brochure
ECDC is mandated to communicate directly with the European public on current and emerging threats to human health posed by infectious diseases. As part of this work - and to further establish the centre as a leading authority in the field – we are now launching a new corporate brochure targeted the European public, describing ECDC’s activities and goals.
ECDC's mission is to identify, assess and communicate current and emerging threats to human health posed by infectious diseases. From 1 April 2011 ECDC modified its organisational structure to better serve its mission. In view of this - and as ECDC is growing as an organisation – we are publishing the information brochure to ensure that anyone in the EU, or further afield, has a simple guide to what we do and how.
Download the brochure here
Second batch of Dignity and nutrition reports published
We have published the second batch of reports from the Dignity and nutrition inspection programme.
You can now find reports for:
- St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust
- Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust
- Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- The Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust
- Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- Kingston Hospital NHS Trust
- Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
- Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust
- Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust
- North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust
- York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Find out more about the inspection
This programme intends to look at 100 NHS trusts, and focuses on whether people are treated with dignity and respect and get food and drink that meets their needs.
Further inspection reports will be published at weekly intervals over the course of the summer. A national report into our key findings will be published in September.
WHO Guidelines to Hand Hygiene.
As part of a major global effort to improve hand hygiene in health care, led by WHO to support health-care workers, the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands annual global campaign was launched in 2009 and is a natural extension of the WHO First Global Patient Safety Challenge: Clean Care is Safer Care work.
The campaign aims to galvanise action at the point of care to demonstrate that hand hygiene is the entrance door for reducing health care-associated infection and patient safety. It also aims to demonstrate the world's commitment to this priority area of health care.
WHO's role includes encouraging engagement and action to maintain this global movement. Numbers are a great awareness-raising mechanism, as demonstrated by the growing number of health-care facilities registered for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands after two years of a call to action, but they are not the end point. Sustaining the efforts to improve patient safety requires dedicated action and innovation both of which are now more crucial than ever. WHO have appreciated receiving communications about country and health-care facility activities. Action must continue; use the WHO tools to support your actions.
Background
WHO SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands annual initiative is part of a major global effort led by the World Health Organization (WHO) to support health-care workers to improve hand hygiene in health care and thus support the prevention of often life threatening HAI.
This initiative is part of the WHO Patient Safety First Global Patient Safety Challenge, ‘Clean Care is Safer Care’ programme aimed at reducing HAI worldwide, which was launched in October 2005. The clear and central feature of Clean Care is Safer Care thus far has been to target efforts on the importance of clean hands in health care. The programme has galvanised action at many levels including, as at July 2010, 124 Ministers of Health having pledged commitment to reducing HAI and to support the work of WHO. Over 40 countries and areas have also started hand hygiene campaigns during this time.
SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands was deemed a natural next phase of the Clean Care is Safer Care programme, moving the call to action from a country pledge of commitment to the point of patient care. The central core of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is that all health-care workers should clean their hands at the right time and in the right way.
SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands incorporates a global annual day to focus on the importance of improving hand hygiene in health care with WHO providing support for these efforts. A suite of hand hygiene improvement tools and materials have been created from a base of existing research and evidence and from rigorous testing, as well as working closely with a range of experts in the field. The tools aim to help the translation into practice of a multimodal strategy for improving and sustaining hand hygiene in health care.
Download the document here.
WHO Patient Safety Newsletter
Published to coincide with celebrations around 5 May, Save Lives: Clean Your Hands. One of the links leads to the very latest figures of registered health-care facilities taking part in this worldwide campaign. This newsletter has as its point of focus the challenges associated with measurement, in particular measuring the progress of interventions to improve patient safety.
In his editorial, Sir Liam Donaldson, Chair of WHO Patient Safety, highlights how complex the issue of measurement is in patient safety, while our Guest Writer, Professor Peter Pronovost, outlines a set of key principles the world needs to consider in assessing our forward progress in safety globally.
Like the previous one three months ago, this is a web-based newsletter, a single page of text but which includes numerous web links that you can click on to access each article in full. If you slide your mouse over the title of each piece and CTRL + click, the link will take you straight to the relevant page on PSP's website.
Download the newsletter here.
Hepatitis B: Pathway stages to protection - Actions, roles, responsibilities and standards
This document in the form of powerpoint slides, provides commissioners and providers with best practice guidance on screening and the vaccination of babies born to Hepatitis B positive mothers
It provides a pathway overview and then takes you through each stage of the pathway step by step in more detail.
Download the document here.
Living well with dementia: a National Dementia Strategy - good practice compendium
This good practice compendium has been brought together from across the regions to support local delivery of the national dementia strategy and improve outcomes for people with dementia and their carers. It is an enabler for local change, as described in the Department of Health's revised outcomes focused implementation plan.
Download the Strategy Document here.
Global Status Report on Noncommunicable Diseases 2010
Description of the global burden of NCDs, their risk factors and determinants.
Download the report here.
Guidance on the NHS Standard Contract for Care Home Services 2011/12
This document is the Guidance on the NHS Standard Contract for Care Home Services 2011/12 to be read be in conjunction with the NHS Standard Contract for Care Homes.
Download the Guidance Document here.
The Infection Risks Associated With Clothing and Household Linens in Home and Everyday Life Settings, and the Role of Laundry
Courtesy of Home Hygiene and Health
IFH has produced a scientific review of the infection risks associated with clothing and household linens such as towels, bed linen and so on. This includes data on how, and to what extent, these items become contaminated with pathogenic organisms and how they survive and are spread. This is reviewed together with data on the extent to which we are exposed to these agents in our daily lives.
The paper also reviews epidemiological data and data from quantitative risk modelling techniques assessing the link between laundry hygiene and infectious disease risk. The extent of the risks associated with clothing etc is also assessed in relation to risks associated with other surfaces such as the hands, hand and food contact surfaces and so on.
The report can be downloaded here
The essential standards of quality and safety you can expect
There is a new law about regulating health and adult social care in England. From 1 October 2010, every health and adult social care service in England is legally responsible for making sure it meets new essential standards of quality and safety.
We will register, and therefore license, care services if they meet essential standards and we will monitor them to make sure they continue to do so. We have a wide range of actions we can take if we find care services are not meeting essential standards.
The following list is a summary of the full essential standards that you can expect from your care service.
The essential standards
1. You can expect to be involved and told what’s happening at every stage of your care
- You will always be involved in discussions about your care and treatment, and your privacy and dignity will be respected by all staff.
- You will be given opportunities, encouragement and support to promote your independence.
- You will be able to agree or reject any type of examination, care, treatment or support before you receive it.
2. You can expect care, treatment and support that meets your needs
- Your personal needs will be assessed to make sure you get care that is safe and supports your rights.
- You will get the food and drink you need to meet your dietary needs.
- You get the treatment that you and your health or care professional agree will make a difference to your health and wellbeing.
- You will get safe and co-ordinated care where more than one care provider is involved or if you are moved between services.
3. You can expect to be safe
- You will be protected from abuse or the risk of abuse, and staff will respect your human rights.
- You will be cared for in a clean environment where you are protected from infection.
- You will get the medicines you need, when you need them, and in a safe way.
- You will be cared for in a safe and accessible place that will help you as you recover.
- You will not be harmed by unsafe or unsuitable equipment.
4. You can expect to be cared for by qualified staff
- Your health and welfare needs are met by staff who are properly qualified.
- There will always be enough members of staff available to keep you safe and meet your health and welfare needs.
- You will be looked after by staff who are well managed and have the chance to develop and improve their skills.
5. You can expect your care provider to constantly check the quality of its services
- Your care provider will continuously monitor the quality of its services to make sure you are safe.
- If you, or someone acting on your behalf makes a complaint, you will be listened to and it will be acted upon properly.
- Your personal records, including medical records, will be accurate and kept safe and confidential.
How is the new system different?
- We look at the care you get rather than at systems and processes.
- We listen to what you’ve got to say about your treatment, care and support. We want you to have a bigger say in how we decide whether care services are meeting essential standards.
- We check how care services are meeting essential standards now, rather than in the past.
- We have a wide range of powers that allow us to act if we find that a care service is not meeting essential standards.
- We update our website when there are changes to report about checks, improvements or concerns.
Download the booklets
Travel vaccinations and malaria prophylaxis: March 2011 update
23 Mar 11
Click below to open or right-click and save target as to download to your desktop.1
Related files
The following files will open in their associated programs.
Healthcare associated infection - reduce C. difficile April 2011 Implementation
Current infection rates suggest that the level of performance required to avoid HCAI is not maintained consistently. There are a variety of reasons cited for this, including staff shortages, bed shortages, and skill mix. While these issues may make performing our role more challenging, the aspects of care that cause infection are at the heart of our most fundamental elements of clinical practice, and we must strive to perform these activities correctly every time.
To support the delivery of evidence-based practice, staff need to be clear about the elements that are required to perform safe care and have a method of being able to measure performance. Clinicians require the necessary training, skills and competence to undertake these activities and, importantly, the desire to constantly ‘self audit’, reflect on practice and ask for advice if uncertain.
The tools within the Saving Lives programme provide the framework to support all healthcare staff in delivering high-quality care. It has reliability and safety at its heart. They are designed specifically to ensure that services are delivered with minimum variation and designed to make it easy for everyone to do the right thing for patients in every procedure.
"Everyone's business" has become a mantra associated with reducing MRSA and cleaning up our hospitals, and rightly so. The HCAI and Cleanliness Division provides the tools for Trusts and individuals to identify exactly what to do and a method to demonstrate progress. This site will give you an understanding of how you can work with your team to help reduce the number of infections among your patients.
The policies and messages within these documents are clear for all to see. Infection control and cleanliness are everyone’s business. Everyone can contribute to infection control and therefore we all have a duty to fulfil our role.
In June 2009, data published by the Health Protection Agency confirmed the early achievement of the Department of Health's target to reduce C. difficile infections by 30%. As part of supporting further progress, the 2010-11 NHS Operating Framework included a commitment to develop and publish by Spring 2010 what it described as a new minimum standard for Clostridium difficile infections, for implementation from April 2011. To download a copy of the C. difficile methodology Objective courtesy of www.dh.gsi.gov.uk is available here.
The articles and documentation plus any attachments are re-produced with the courtesy of the original content author. The views or opinions expressed in any re-produced content or relating downloads are solely those of the original author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company unless specifically stated. The downloads have been scanned for viruses, but it is the responsibility of the recipient to conduct their own security measures and no responsibility is accepted by the Company for the loss or damage arising from the downloading of any documentation.
