Contact the Library for further information on any of the topics listed below.

NHS England issues update on industrial action for April 26 and 27 – NHS England
NHS England asked all trust boards across the country to provide assurance that they have adequate plans in place to manage the impact of the strike, focussing on essential services – emergency care, maternity, resuscitation teams, mental health crisis intervention teams and major incident plans.

Nearly two million patients to receive person-centred support to manage their own care – NHS England
People with long-term conditions will be supported to better manage their own health and care needs, thanks to the roll-out of an evidence-based tool over the next five years.

Health and wellbeing strategy podcasts – Marion Furr, NHS Employers
Listen to the second in the series of the health and wellbeing podcasts which provide advice on implementing a successful strategy from Marion Furr, Chair of staff health and wellbeing at Department of Health.

Commissioners split on STP leads’ roles and responsibility – HSJ
More than a third of clinical commissioning group bosses expect sustainability and transformation footprint leaders to become responsible for performance and finance across their patch.

New report on impact of revalidation – NHS Employers
An interim report on revalidation has shown that its having a positive impact on licensed doctors.

Open for business – NHS England Blog, Dr Mahiben Maruthappu
The co-founder NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) looks at how technology is transforming the world and says the NHS, although thought by some to be slow at adopting innovation, is seeing progress.

Monitoring surgical wounds for infection: information for patientstags: Promotional material – HM Government
Updated: Added translations to existing leaflet on surgical infection. This leaflet is available for healthcare professionals to download and print for patients who are included in post-discharge surveillance submitted to Public Health England.

NICE quality standard: antimicrobial stewardship
NICE has issued a new quality standard Antimicrobial stewardship(QS121). The standard covers the effective use of antimicrobials (antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and antiparasitic medicines) to reduce the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (loss of effectiveness of antimicrobials). It covers all settings, all formulations of antimicrobials (oral, parenteral and topical agents) and is for health and social care practitioners, organisations that commission, provide or support the provision of care, as well as people using antimicrobials and their carers.

Restricting surgery?
The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) has published Smokers and overweight patients: soft targets for NHS savings?  This report found that over one in three clinical commissioning groups in England are denying or delaying routine surgery to patients such as hip and knee replacements until they stop smoking or lose weight, in contravention of national clinical guidance.  The RCS found that over a third (34%) of the 200 CCGs that responded to FOI requests have one or more policies on BMI level or smoking status which stop overweight patients or smokers being referred for routine surgery.