Oliver Groene, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Patient safety and quality of care are priorities in health, as is learning from our mistakes when things go wrong. But little is known about what hospitals are doing to make sure the services they deliver…
What would Florence Nightingale make of present-day healthcare? Like anyone else, she would probably find much to admire – even much to be in awe of – but just as much of which to disapprove and despair…
Jennifer Dixon, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Health and healthcare policy have been a matter for the separate administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since devolution in the late 1990s. While there have been many similarities in the…
Many of us live in a world where we can access and edit personal information online and on the move. Whether it is checking bank balances, amending grocery orders, or informing the world of our most recent…
Jeremy Hunt’s announcement that the government will consider extending the legal duty of health professionals to be open and honest with patients or their families when mistakes cause harm is one of the…
Lisa Trigg, London School of Economics and Political Science
A BBC report has uncovered that nearly half of the reviews for a single NHS trust on NHS Choices were submitted from the trust’s own computers. The reviews had been provided by Patient Opinion, which gathers…
The UK government has decided to hold off on plans to upload GP records onto a central database for six months. But it may have to drop the plan permanently unless it can provide satisfactory answers to…
Imagine going to work and starting the day by being told that a customer doesn’t want to deal with you because you are black. And the response from your employer is to ask your white colleague to serve…
Jonathan Freedland is right to argue the value of linking health datasets for information and research purposes, as the NHS’s care.data scheme plans to do with information for people living in England…
The debate about uploading nearly all data from UK medical practices to a national database continues to cause concern. Responding to fears that the information held in the care.data database will put…
Do official inquiries and reports make any difference to how we run and regulate the NHS? It’s a year since Robert Francis published his findings following the high profile failings at Mid Staffordshire…
In the run up to the introduction of the NHS care.data programme, there is an urgent need for a debate about what we, and our healthcare providers, mean by the term “consent”. So far, the plans for care.data…
Given the heightened sense of concern about our personal data following the Edward Snowden revelations, it probably isn’t the best time for the NHS to ask us for more. So it simply hasn’t bothered asking…
As I get out and about in the health service I never cease to be amazed by the quality of care that is provided every day. When we get it wrong, the implications can be catastrophic – and we need to understand…
There is nothing more likely to raise the hackles of any self-respecting rationalist than to be confronted with the latest celebrity story about the miraculous healing power of homeopathy or some other…
Stories about “population ageing” often have a number of things in common – it is bad, it is new, and it will overwhelm us all. The major fear is a burden of cost and caring that more older people will…
We expect just as much from our ambulance services as we do from accident and emergency departments. But under-resourced and overstretched health systems mean ambulance staff are increasingly under pressure…
Lisa Trigg, London School of Economics and Political Science
Tim Kelsey, the NHS’s Director for Patients and Information, has announced that the service is to launch a TripAdvisor-style patient feedback site, following a pilot in London and the north-east. In the…
The NHS is funding a pilot programme that prescribes surfing lessons for young people with depression and low self-esteem. Based in Dorset, the Wave Project is open to people aged between eight and 21…
“Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking. I doubt any of you noticed, but when we departed a few moments ago, we actually started the take off from the wrong point on the runway. It was a twitchy…
Deputy Director, Intellectual Forum at Jesus College in the University of Cambridge, and Researcher for the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University, University of Cambridge