Month: September 2012

Categories
Children Healthy Child including NCMP & CDO

Accurately administering oral medication to children isn't child's play

Beckett V. et al. Archives of Diseases in Childhood, 2012; 97: 838-841

Parents administer oral medications with various measuring devices including metal teaspoons, calibrated spoons and oral syringes. We aimed to determine which was the most accurate. The calibrated spoon was the most accurate producing a mean volume of 5 ml, while the oral syringe had the smallest variance. The increased variability of calibrated or metal spoons may result in under or overdosing especially when administering drugs with a narrow therapeutic window. Health care professionals must make a case-by-case decision regarding which device is preferable depending on the medication in question. Parental education could improve measuring accuracy.

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Categories
Library

Double checking the administration of medicines: what is the evidence? A systematic review

Alsulami Z. et al. Archives of Diseases in Childhood, 2012; 97: 833-837

The objective of this article is to evaluate the evidence for double checking the administration of medicines. There is insufficient evidence to either support or refute the practice of double checking the administration of medicines. Clinical trials are needed to establish whether double checking medicines are effective in reducing medication errors.

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Categories
Children Healthy Child including NCMP & CDO

The role of herd immunity in parents' decision to vaccinate children: a systemmatic review

Quadri-Sheriff, M. et al. Pediatrics, 2012; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2012-0140

Herd immunity is an important benefit of childhood immunization, but it is unknown if the concept of benefit to others influences parents’ decisions to immunize their children. Our objective was to determine if the concept of “benefit to others” has been found in the literature to influence parents’ motivation for childhood immunization.

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Categories
Alcohol Children Illegal Drugs Substance Misuse Substance Use Tobacco & Drugs Young People

Helping parents to recover from substance misuse

By Community Care Online (2012)

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to risk assessing parents who misuse drugs and alcohol. Each case is different, depending on the circumstances. Community Care asked three experts what children’s social workers should look out for.

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Categories
Commissioning CVD Liver Disease including NHS Health Checks Respiratory Disease

Browsing disease prevelance models

By the Public Health Observatory (2012)

Looking only at the numbers of patients currently being treated for a disease does not show the true prevalence and impact on the population’s health. At any given time there are many people who have a disease but are not aware of it because they have not yet been diagnosed. A robust and well-researched disease prevalence model can help commissioners to assess the true needs of their community, calculate the level of services needed and invest the appropriate level of resources for prevention, early detection, treatment and care. Prevalence models provide estimates of underlying prevalence derived from population statistics and scientific research on the risk factors for each disease. The models can also be used to support case-finding by identifying those areas where detection rates are low and targeting enhanced diagnostic activity on them.

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Categories
Library Public Mental Health Well-Being

Out of sight: stopping the neglect and abuse of people with a learning difficulty

By Mencap  (2012)

This report calls for action to prevent people with a learning disability being sent to institutions where they are at risk of abuse and neglect. It suggests measures such as the development of local services by commissioners that specifically meet the needs of children and adults with learning disabilities, the integration of local assessment and treatment units with local services, and frequent, rigorous inspections by the Care Quality Commission.

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Categories
CCGs Commissioning Library Value

Looking for value in hard times: How a new approach to priority setting can help improve patient care while making savings

By The Health Foundation (August 2012)

This report describes a new approach to priority setting called Star (socio-technical allocation of resources) designed to help commissioners and others pinpoint where they may be able to get additional value from their resources by using them more effectively. It works by producing simple visual models, developed interactively with stakeholders, so that everyone involved can understand the nature of the choices to be made, and the disadvantages of not changing current practices. The approach combines value for money analysis with stakeholder engagement. This allows those planning services to determine how resources can be most effectively invested, while the engagement of stakeholders means the decisions are understood and supported by those most affected.

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Categories
Healthy Settings Oral Health Physical Activity

Local area walking and cycling statistics: England 2010/11

By Department of Transport (August 2012)

This is a new statistical release which presents information on walking and cycling amongst adults (aged 16 and over) in England, by local area. The statistics in this release are based on results from the Active People Survey (APS), an annual household telephone survey administered by Sport England. The APS is designed to measure recreation but includes questions about all cycling and walking activity. The APS covers more than 160,000 persons, which is sufficient to enable detailed analysis at local authority level.

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Categories
Alcohol Tobacco & Drugs Young People

Local variations in youth drinking cultures

By The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (August 2012)

This study explored the lives of young people in two regions of England where alcohol-related harm rates differ and found that: the north has a higher degree of reported indicators of alcohol-related harms than the south-east and the south-west, but despite this young people’s drinking behaviour in these areas followed similar patterns; young people rarely drank on their own; young people actively sought out clusters of youth-orientated bars, and sometimes these clusters encouraged young people to drink more than they intended; and planning authorities had often been unable to resist commercial pressures to allow clubs and bars to fill units that would otherwise be vacant, despite a wish to limit the number of licensed premises.

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Categories
Alcohol Tobacco & Drugs

Local alcohol profiles for England

By Public Health Observatories (2012)

The North West Public Health Observatory is pleased to announce publication of the Local Alcohol Profiles for England 2012 (LAPE) on behalf of the Public Health Observatories in England. The profiles contain 25 alcohol-related indicators for every local Authority (LA) and 22 for every PCT; the indicators measure the impact of alcohol on local communities, including local area data on alcohol-related hospital admissions and alcohol-related crime.

Click here to view the profiles