OBJECTIVE To review the experiences of patients attending NHS Health Checks in England. DESIGN A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies with a thematic synthesis of qualitative studies. DATA SOURCES An electronic literature search of Medline, Embase, Health Management Information Consortium, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Global Health, PsycInfo...

Collaboration between Universities and hospitals has provided the National Health Service (NHS) with many excellent Biomedical Scientists through placement year scheme. Here, we document number of students joining scheme type hospital departments offering student placements over a 10-year period.
 Prior to 2012, were able join fully-funded Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFC...

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) produces recommendations on appropriate treatment within the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales. The NICE guidelines on prophylaxis for venous thromboembolism in orthopaedic surgery recommend that all patients be offered a low molecular weight heparin (LMWH). The linked hospital episode statistics of 219 602 patients were exa...

BACKGROUND There is a scarcity of evidence about the role of patient choice and hospital competition policies on surgical cancer services. Previous evidence has shown that patients are prepared to bypass their nearest cancer centre to receive surgery at more distant centres that better meet their needs. In this national, population-based study we investigated the effect of patient mobility and ...

Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as having said, “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” This often seems pertinent to the quality and scope of NHS care. An important example is NHS England’s recent summary on acute hospitals’ performance against four of 10 key national indicators for delivering seven day services. The 10 standards were draw...

BACKGROUND The popularity of complementary medicine continues to be asserted by the professional associations and umbrella organisations of these therapies. Within conventional medicine there are also signs that attitudes towards some of the complementary therapies are changing. AIM To describe the scale and scope of access to complementary therapies (acupuncture, chiropractic, homoeopathy, h...

During the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to the primary care level of service for children and adolescents with mental health problems. In particular, a number of national reports have advised service commissioners and providers to increase the amount of specialist child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) support to primary care colleagues (Department of Health/Depa...

The release of the Mid Staffordshire hospital report otherwise called the Francis report once again ignited the debate about the issue of abuse of especially vulnerable patients, while navigating the care pathway as inpatients in hospitals; within the National health service (NHS), England. Once more the official reaction from the NHS directorate is more “standards” to monitor failed standards ...

BACKGROUND Care pathways for women needing expensive, secure hospital care are poorly understood. AIMS To characterise women in low and medium security hospitals in England and Wales and to compare populations by security and service provider type. METHOD Census data from all specialist commissioning areas. Sociodemographic, clinical, medico-legal, criminological and placement needs data we...

T research findings from the NHS R&D Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme influence key decision-making bodies such as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Screening Committee (NSC) who rely on HTA outputs to help raise standards of care. HTA findings also help to improve the quality of the service in the NHS indirectly in that they form a key component...