NHS England have published their business plan for 2016/17. It recognises as critical to achieving its objectives the involvement and empowerment of patients and the public
New figures today show the number of patients that have opted out of sharing their care information outside the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) for purposes other than their direct care2.
NICE has updated its guidelines pages to explain how they should be used in offering patients and service users the best care.
The new wording explains that guidelines should be taken fully into account but that the patient, or person receiving care, should be at the heart of decision-making. It also emphasises the importance of a clinician’s expertise and judgement.
Libraries in Shropshire are to hold a series of events to launch new collections of books for young people aged 13 to 18 years to provide them with advice, information and support to help them understand their mental health and well-being.
Reading Well for Young People is launched on Tuesday 12 April 2016. It provides a booklist of 35 titles covering 12 topics and conditions including anxiety, depression, self-harm, body image and eating disorders, as well as life experiences such as bullying. The booklist features self-help and psych-education material, as well as memoirs, graphic novels and fiction.
To coincide with International Children’s Book Day 2016, Amnesty International released the results from a new YouGov opinion poll. In the poll, parents were asked to select from a list the pastime that they thought were most likely to enhance the ability of their child to empathise with others. Over half of the parents polled said that reading a book was the most likely pastime to do this.
Research shows that well-informed and engaged patients are better at self management of their own conditions. Further, better self-management means fewer hospital visits, which in turn means lower healthcare costs and less call on the NHS. An integral part of better patient management is quality patient information; information that is clear, easy to understand and presented in a user friendly format. That’s where Interlagos come in.
Interlagos, in conjunction with one of the country’s most progressive NHS Foundation Trusts, Sheffield Teaching Hospital, has developed groundbreaking Patient Information Publishing Software (PIPS) that allows the trust to produce and manage over 1600 patient leaflets with just two Patient Information Administrators.