Archive for the 'health' Category
Practice makes perfect for doctors
Yazan: Sara | 06 September 2010 | 1 Comment
Categories: health
I was interested to hear about some side effects of the working time directive being applied to junior doctors. According to the British Medical Association, the limits of 48 hours have led to hospital shifts becoming more demanding and leaving less time for doctors to practice their basic skills. Earlier this year, I was admitted to my local [...]
How much is it worth to save a life?
Yazan: Sara | 01 September 2010 | 1 Comment
Categories: health, newspapers
It’s almost exactly 10 years since I lost my father to bowel cancer at the age of 73 and almost a year to the day that Matthew’s grandfather, who I loved as my own, died of the same disease at the grand age of 98. The latter fought the illness for five years, a great [...]
Labour countermands doctors’ orders
Yazan: Sara | 27 August 2010 | 2 Comments
Categories: health
The Labour triballists have gone into full on attack mode with the news tonight that the government is planning to downgrade the service offered by NHS Direct. John Prescott is one of many whose Twitter feed screams: “This is disgraceful. ConDems set to axe NHS Direct. http://bit.ly/cJvnxV We must stop them #savenhsdirect”. The plan is [...]
Conservative health spokesman berates trusts for following Conservative policy
Yazan: Sara | 04 February 2010 | 1 Comment
Categories: Conservatives, health
On today’s ‘Daily Politics’ , the Shadow Health spokesman Andrew Lansley criticised Primary Care Trusts, saying PCTs ‘ are not assessing the quality of out-of-hours service, they are contracting on price alone’. Excuse me, Mr Lansley! Thatcher’s Conservative govenments introduced Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) in the Local Government Planning and Land Act (1980) and extended it further in [...]
Herfordshire families at risk from poor ante-natal screening
Yazan: Sara | 01 February 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Abbots Langley, health, Watford
The Telegraph carries a report into the postcode lottery of screening for Down’s syndrome, which is putting the pregnancies of many local women at needless risk. Other hospitals are using methods which falsely identify too many pregnant women as “high risk,” putting thousands under needless pressure to undergo invasive procedures which increase their risk of miscarriage. [...]
Palin’s pants on fire
Yazan: Sara | 22 December 2009 | No Comments
Categories: health, Sarah Palin, USA
The Pulitzer Prize winning site PolitiFact.com has named Sarah Palin’s comments about universal healthcare as the winner of their ‘Lie of the Year’ award. Nearly 5,000 readers of the site chose Palin’s statement to receive the award from a shortlist of eight nominations. In the citation, the web site said, ‘Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the [...]
Neither drunk, nor disorderly
Yazan: Sara | 17 December 2009 | No Comments
Categories: children, health
According to the Government’s Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, I have a middle-class obsession. Actually I am a mother attempting to have a middle-class obsession. My attempted obsession? Feeding my child alcohol. Now before you run off and report me to social services as an unfit parent, I should point out that this only goes [...]
Do fathers have to be at the birth to bond?
Yazan: Sara | 26 November 2009 | No Comments
Categories: health
My father didn’t see my entry into the world. In the 1960s, fewer than a quarter of men were present at the births of their children and my father took up the standard birthing position of being outside with a book. More strangely maybe, my husband missed the birth of our daughter – not through choice, [...]
Grow up – and wear a condom!
Yazan: sarabedford | 26 March 2009 | No Comments
Categories: health
Over the past 24 hours, the airwaves have been full of the possibility of adverts for condoms being shown on television. I’m in the ‘slightly in favour’ category on this – I can’t see that the reason people don’t use condoms is down to the lack of choice and advertisements on prime time television. But [...]
Stop the gripe water, Nanny – or we'll all become binge drinkers!
Yazan: sarabedford | 29 January 2009 | 1 Comment
Categories: health
So according to Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s chief medical officer, children aged under 15 should never be allowed to drink alcohol, even in small quantities. Sir Liam said that childhood should be an ‘alcohol-free time’ and that children who drink were at risk of “serious harm”. At present It is legal for parents to give a child [...]
