This guidance document on prudent use of antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs has been produced for NHSScotland by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC). It fulfils one of the requirements set out in the Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy and Scottish Action Plan (Scottish Executive Health Department 2002) and forms part of the Healthcare Associated Infection (HAI) Action Plan work progra...

The increasing complexity of healthcare is accelerating the rate of specialisation in medicine, which in turn aggravates the fragmentation of care in hospitals. The hospitalist movement advocates for the return of generalist physicians to the hospital to provide general and more holistic medical care to inpatients. This can be seen as an adaptive response to care fragmentation. Starting in the ...

In the UK, a series of high-profile healthcare 'scandals' and subsequent inquiries repeatedly point to the pivotal role culture plays in producing and sustaining healthcare failures. Inquiries are a sociotechnology of accountability that signal a shift in how personal accountabilities of healthcare professionals are being configured. In focusing on problematic organizational cultures, these inq...

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust submitted a successful bid to be one of 10 trusts involved in the first wave of the hospital medicines management collaborative. This article discusses the concept of medicines management and highlights the advantages of having a nurse as the project facilitator.

BACKGROUND All changes in the regulation of pharmacies have an impact on the work carried out in pharmacies and also on patient safety, regardless of whether this is the intention or not. OBJECTIVE To compare staff apprehension regarding some aspects of patient safety and quality in community pharmacies prior to and after the 2009 changes in regulation of the Swedish community pharmacy market...