Bid to stop doctor gagging orders

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
26 January 2012 Last updated at 00:00 GMT Whistle-blowing in the NHS has received a lot of attention in recent years Doctors are being told they can no longer sign contracts that contain gagging orders, in new guidance issued by the medical regulator.

The General Medical Council advice states medics should not enter contracts or deals that seek to stop them raising concerns about poor care.

The guidance also makes clear that doctors have a duty to act if they believe care is being compromised.

It is the latest in a series of attempts to encourage whistle-blowing.

Evidence has been emerging in recent years of trusts restricting the ability of staff to raise the alarm about bad practices.

Nurse Margaret Haywood was struck off in 2009 after filming examples of neglect at Brighton's Royal Sussex Hospital for a BBC Panorama programme. She has since been reinstated.

'Unacceptable'

This followed the controversy over Stafford Hospital which inspectors criticised for appalling standards of emergency care after "patients needlessly died".

Subsequent reports picked up on the lack of whistle-blowing over the years.

Ministers have produced their own policies encouraging whistle-blowing and a helpline was launched at the start of this year for staff with concerns.

The GMC guidance, which will come into effect on 12 March, is being sent to all 240,000 doctors on the medical register in the UK.

It also includes advice about when doctors should raise concerns and how to tackle any barriers that they may face.

GMC chief executive Niall Dickson said: "These clauses are totally unacceptable.

"Doctors who sign such contracts are breaking their professional obligations and are putting patients and their careers at risk."

Source BBC

GOOGLE NEWS | BBC NEWS | NY DAILY NEWS | TRAFFIC NEWS | TECH NEWS

Read More

'Frantic' call by Jackson doctor

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
29 September 2011 Last updated at 09:02 GMT Faheem Mohammad: Jackson's children "were in panicked state"

Key aides of Michael Jackson have told the manslaughter trial of his doctor of events on the day the superstar died.

His personal assistant described a "frantic" call from Dr Conrad Murray.

Head of security Faheem Muhammad said he saw the medic try to revive the unconscious star, as two of Jackson's children looked on in tears.

Prosecutors say Dr Murray caused the death, in June 2009, with a lethal dose of the sedative, propofol. The defence says the star gave himself too much.

The pop star had been using the drug, which is usually administered intravenously, as a sleeping aid.

Michael Amir Williams, Jackson's personal assistant, told the court about a phone call he received from Dr Murray on the day of Jackson's death.

Mr Williams told the jury: "He said, 'Get here right away, Mr Jackson had a bad reaction. Get somebody up here immediately'."

'Very nervous'

He also gave details about how he dispatched security guards to the star's bedroom and said Dr Murray was "frantic" as Jackson's body was taken out to the ambulance.

Meanwhile, Mr Muhammad confirmed he saw an intravenous (IV) stand in Jackson's bedroom as the doctor tried to revive the star.

"Dr Murray was... on the opposite side of him [Jackson] near the far side of the bed on the other side," he said.

"He appeared to be administering CPR [cardio-pulmonary resuscitation], he appeared very nervous, he was on his side, he was sweating, he just, he appeared to be administering CPR."

Asked about how the star looked, Mr Muhammad said his eyes and mouth were slightly open, but agreed that he seemed already dead.

The security guard described the reactions of Jackson's teenage children, who were in the room at the time.

"Paris was on the ground balled-up crying. Prince was standing there and he just had a real shocked, you know, just slowly crying type of look on his face," he said.

CPR request

Earlier, the court heard that Jackson was energetic and performing well in the days before he died.

Promoter Paul Gongaware told the Los Angeles court that Jackson had been "fully engaged" in rehearsals for his forthcoming series of comeback concerts in London.

Fans of Michael Jackson hold signs outside the Los Angeles courthouse

Mr Gongaware told the court how Jackson asked him to employ Dr Murray as his doctor, adding that that the doctor initially asked for payment of $5m (£3.2m) for a year.

"I told him there's no way that's going to happen," he said, adding that Dr Murray was eventually offered the equivalent of $1.8m (£1.1m) per year.

Mr Gongaware also acknowledged that his firm, AEG, had been sued by Jackson's mother for negligent supervision of Dr Murray while he worked with the star.

AEG's lawyer Kathy Jorrie told the court that Dr Murray had asked for a CPR machine and an additional physician to help him care for Jackson in London.

"He wanted to make sure that there was somebody else available to be of assistance," Ms Jorrie told the court.

On Tuesday, the court heard evidence from Jackson choreographer Kenny Ortega, who told of an email he had written expressing "deep concern" over the singer's health about a week before he died, aged 50.

The trial is expected to last about five weeks.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read More

HEALTH MANAGEMENT. U.S. government draws fire for pulling doctor data

n">(Reuters) - Consumer advocates and journalism groups are fighting a U.S. government move to cut public access to a database of malpractice claims and damages paid by doctors around the nation.
The Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) and Consumers Union on Thursday joined several groups in criticizing curbs by a U.S. health agency earlier this month on public access to a database of malpractice settlements over concerns of a breach of one doctor's confidentiality.
Since 1986, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has tracked troubled doctors' records in the National Practitioners Data Bank, an electronic database that, by law, is confidential and open only to hospitals, state licensing boards and other eligible healthcare entities.
However, the HRSA has also been stripping the database of any identifiable elements and making it available online to researchers, patients and the media through a so-called Public Use File.
That file has been down after a Kansas City Star reporter combined the data from it with his research of court records to identify details about a local neurosurgeon and later run a story exposing the doctor's history of being sued for alleged malpractice.
"As soon as HRSA became aware that in this case, a reporter was able to use the data in the (Public Use File) to obtain information about a specific physician we had no choice but to follow the law and remove the (Public Use File) from the website until we can find a way to make as much information as is it legal to disclose available as quickly as possible," said the agency's spokesman Martin Kramer in an email.
"The law is clear; information about individual practitioners in the NPDB is to be confidential."
The reaction from the Obama administration, which has pledged greater transparency, has puzzled journalists who for years have used the publicly available anonymous data to expose medical malpractice.
"Nothing else has changed; just their interpretation (of the law) seems to have changed," said Charles Ornstein, president of the AHCJ whose letter was also signed by the presidents of the Investigative Reporters and Editors group and the Society of Professional Journalists.
"If anything, the agency erred on the side of physician privacy," the letter said.
Journalists also criticized HRSA's warning letter to the reporter, Alan Bavley, before his story ran, telling him he could be hit with a civil monetary penalty for naming the physician based on confidential data from the file.
(To read the HRSA letter, see r.reuters.com/rys73s ; to read AHCJ's letter, see r.reuters.com/sys73s)
"The responsibility of the agency (HRSA) is to ensure that they do not provide any identifiable information in the data base, and that responsibility has been met for 15 years," said Lisa McGiffert, director of the Consumers Union Safe Patient Project, a consumer advocate that also sent a letter to HRSA.
HRSA's Kramer said he could not speak to what has happened in the past.
It remains unclear when and in what format the public version of the data bank may return online. For now, researchers can contact staffers at the data bank with specific research questions, Kramer said.
Other consumer groups including Public Citizen have sent letters to the HRSA, to which the health agency will respond "in a timely fashion," the spokesman said.
(Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Editing by Richard Chang)

Read More