Dr DonaldEarly, a well-known psychiatrist at Glenside Hospital, died atFrenchay Hospital on Easter Monday. He was an outstanding man whomade major contributions in Bristol. He was a delightful man with amarvellous Irish sense of humour. We hope to publish an obituary in aforthcoming issue of this website.
General
It is said that emergency planners in Bristol do not have enough cash to prepare for a Madrid-style terror attack. This warning was given by Patrick Cunningham, President of the Emergency Planning Society which represents councils and emergency services. One of the main reasons is that funding for local authority emergency planning has fallen from 24.5 million in 1991 to 19 million now.
A new method now allows surgeons to replace a hip joint through a smaller incision than was used previously. This is an example of minimally invasive surgery (MIS). The first operation in Bristol was undertaken recently at St Marys Hospital, Clifton. The cost of the operation is said to be about £10,000 which is similar to that of a standard hip operation on the NHS.
Dr Tom Frewin has attacked the Government for not cracking down on alcohol advertisers who are helping to fuel the binge-drinking culture in the West.
Dr Reid, Health Secretary, has announced that from April 2005 heart patients will get the choice of where they have their surgery as soon as they are told that they need an operation.
Nearly 10,000 patients in Bristol were forced to wait more than 4 hours in A&E Departments during the winter. About a quarter of those needing urgent medical attention had to wait longer than the target time.
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence has published guidance to improve supportive and palliative care for patients with cancer. Christopher Head, Chief Executive of the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, said that the excellent guidelines had the potential to improve peoples experience of treatment and care beyond recognition.
About 30% of the Citys elderly residents missed out on vaccinations according to the Department of Health.
Chris Born , Bristol North PCT Chief Executive, says that he is very encouraged by the progress that is being made in fighting heart disease. Three and a half thousand people in Bristol have stopped smoking in the last 2 years. There is now better access to heart disease prevention advice.
A number of families in Bristol whose dead childrens body parts were removed without consent, have won a High Court compensation claim.
A Bristol pharmacist has designed a computer system which he says will revolutionise the way patients buy their medicines. It is claimed that the system could save the NHS millions of pounds. Chemists will be able to safely dispense medicines to patients even when a pharmacist is not available.
Senior Social Services managers have assured elderly and disabled people that 2 City Day Centres will stay open.
Professor Stephen Frankel has chaired an independent working party charged with developing a national strategy to combat public health threats such as smoking, obesity, and sexually transmitted diseases.
People across the South West will be asked if they want to follow Ireland in introducing smoke-free bars and restaurants. A poll is to be undertaken on the 24th May.
The Fishponds Health Centre is to be rebuilt. The residents are worried that the development will create traffic chaos and noise.
Bristol GPs will shortly be able to opt out of providing an out-of-hours service to their patients. GP practices can now hand over responsibility for out-of-hours care to the local primary care trust. From January 2005 PCTs will automatically have responsibility for out-of-hours care with many using a mixture of nurses, paramedics, ambulance services and other healthcare professionals to work with GPs in providing the services that patients need. This will be a gradual development over the next year.
Sexual health professionals in Bristol have called for more funding to help deal with the increasing number of sexually transmitted infections diagnosed in teenagers. It is said that the situation is particularly bad in Bristol. More than 10,000 young people each year attend the Brook Advisory Service most of them are women under the age of 25. Risky sexual behaviour is on the increase.
Businesses in Bristol have 6 months to make sure that their premises are as acceptable to people with disabilities as to anyone else before provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act come into force on October 1st.
Bristol is said to have the best tasting tap water in the country and its taste is only beaten by 2 bottled brands according to a top food critic.
Ambulance chiefs have warned people not to ignore early morning chest pains. A study of 999 calls in the Bristol area found that the early morning was the most common time of day for heart attacks or strokes.
April is bowel cancer awareness month. Paul Durdey has been contributing to articles on the subject in the Evening Post.
A programme of road schemes costing £2.74 million has been drawn-up for the next 2 years by Bristol City Council. The major objective is to cut accidents and reduce highway dangers. Bristol has to meet Government targets to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads. This means reducing the overall number of injury accidents.
Almost all family doctors in Bristol have now signed-up to the new GP contract the Department of Health has revealed. However, Dr Simon Atkins, GP at Fishponds Health Centre, thinks that this may be the final nail in the coffin of medical autonomy. Dr Atkins says that the quality measures being talked about bear little relationship to the things that we know lead to patient satisfaction. Sadly, this cannot be measured. In future our consultations will be statistics centred rather than patient centred. For instance, you might want me to examine your bunions but until I know if you are a smoker and what your blood pressure is, your bunions can keep themselves to themselves because they are not worth a brass farthing to me.
Parents in Bristol are being advised by the Government to use child car seats or booster seats until their children are at least 11 years old or about 5 ft tall. The Department of Transport says that parents stop using car child seats for their children far too soon.
Hospitals
Thirty-seven people have abseiled down the side of the Bristol Childrens Hospital and raised a considerable amount of money for the hospital and for the National Kidney Foundation.
Frenchay Hospital has acted as a national role model by introducing a radiographer consultant-led gastrointestinal service. Its staff will offer expert advice and professional leadership as well as being involved in education, training and research. Robert Law has been appointed as radiographer-consultant. He is one of 6 consultant radiographers who have been appointed nationally under the new scheme.
Several wards at Southmead Hospital closed in March because the highly infectious Norwalk virus was detected.
A new report released by the Department of Health is entitled Winning the War on Heart Disease. The report claims that deaths from cardiovascular disease have fallen by more than 23% between 1995/7 and 2000/2. Eight out of 10 heart attack patients received thrombolysis treatment within 30 minutes of hospital arrival in 2003. It was expected that no heart patients would wait more than 6 months for an operation by the end of March 2004 compared with 2700 waiting that long in 2002. At present there are 6 fully-qualified heart surgeons working at the BRI which is the only place in the City carrying out the procedure. Professor Angelini agreed that the results and services are better than they had ever been. However in Bristol the wards need to be brought together. At the moment we have a problem with the ward structure and the conditions are appalling. They are fragmented and we have 4 or 5 wards for cardiac patients and they are all on different levels of the hospital. This includes the old building. There are also wards at Southmead hospital. It is clear that cardiology services need to be brought together. Between 1200 and 1500 procedures are carried out each year the majority of which are heart bypass operations. Less than 2% of these patients die following the operation making Bristol one of the safest places to have the operation in the UK. Rapid access chest pain clinics have been set-up at all 3 major hospitals in Bristol.
A new cystic fibrosis ward at the BRI has been opened. There are 4 en-suite bedrooms. The rooms are self-contained. Patients are very concerned about the possibility of passing new bacterial infections between each other and having their own rooms reduces this risk of cross-infection.
Mr Roy Brewer wrote to the Evening Post congratulating the Bristol Eye Hospital for its high standards of treatment and patient care.
The Evening Post of April 12th stated that a new purpose built centre for cardiac surgery could be established in the City with £45 million of Government funding. However, no agreement has yet been reached.
Hospital waiting times in Bristol are amongst the longest in the country. Figures from the Department of Health show that patients could expect to wait almost 13 weeks for an operation. This puts the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority in third place in a list of the countrys slowest health authorities. Kent and South West Peninsula had the poorest record at 103 and 94 days respectively.
NHS Walk In Centres in Bristol have inspired plans for similar health care in Holland. A group of 28 Dutch health care professionals have recently spent a day looking around the 2 Walk In Centres in Bristol.
The Government has introduced new penalties on local authorities to stop patients being left in hospital while they wait for a place in a care home or for mobility aids. Because there is a shortage of community care provision for the elderly patients have to stay in hospital longer than is appropriate. The Government has warned that it will fine councils £100 for every night an elderly person spends in hospital when he or she is well enough to leave. Bristol Social Services have been given £412,000 this year to deal with this problem and this will rise to £824,000 next year.
Hospitaldevelopments including plans for a new South Bristol Hospital
Hospital planners are said to have been told that their preferred site for a South Bristol Community Hospital has been eaten up by development. The preferred site was Hengrove Park. However, a scheme to build 800 new homes and an Olympic-size swimming pool has been given the go-ahead.
A later contribution indicated that a new hospital for South Bristol was likely to be built in Hengrove Park. The proposed £25 million South Bristol Community Hospital is due to open in 2008 replacing the Bristol General Hospital. The new hospital will have 50 beds and will carry out orthopaedic operations, other minor surgery, blood transfusions, chemotherapy, and diagnostic procedures. Health chiefs said that they had received hundreds of messages of support and most people wanted the hospital to be built in Hengrove Park.
Concerns have been raised over the number of beds being proposed for the new South Bristol Community Hospital. It was noted that there would probably be a net loss of about 50 beds following closure of the Bristol General Hospital.
Conservatives in South Gloucestershire have called for the local NHS to deliver community hospitals in Yate, Thornbury and Kingswood before closing or making changes to Frenchay and Southmead hospitals.
Controversy over the future of Frenchay Hospital has increased with Steve Webb claiming that the Department of Health is trying to wash its hands of anything to do with potential closures. Mr Webb says that he was shocked that the Health Minister appeared to be trying to wash her hands of any responsibility for the future of local hospitals.
Bristol health chiefs have been warned that plans to shut down Frenchays Casualty Department are deeply unpopular with residents.
Melanie Johnson, Health Minister, insisted that the shake-up of services, expected to hit Frenchay or Southmead, was not about penny pinching. The move is to head off concerns that up to 200 beds could be cut if either hospital is down-graded. She said The changes will not be a response to any financial deficit issues in the local economy but are about considering with excitement the possibility of a better service provision for patients. Roger Berry, Dan Norris and Doug Naysmith, MPs wrote to the Evening Post stating that NHS facilities in the South Gloucester and Bristol area are not organised in anything like the most efficient and effective way. Many people who go to hospital do not need specialist high tech treatment which can be given nearer to their own homes. It was essential that specialist services should be brought together to make the best use of consultants and to avoid duplication. It would be stupid to say I want to keep the hospital in my constituency just as it is. Depending on their needs our constituents might use any one of the main hospitals in Bristol. As South Gloucestershires Labour MPs we are working for a situation in which all the people of South Gloucestershire and Bristol have the best health care facilities possible and not on a simplistic narrow agenda of hands off my hospital. (This seems to be one of the most sensible letters written to the Evening Post during the last few months Ed.)
Mr Bevan, the Bristol Socialist Party, has written to say that the new hospital in South Bristol is a poor substitute for what the people of South Bristol rightly deserve and expect. What is needed is not a community-type hospital but a development on the scale of the 3 main Bristol hospitals.
A leading article in the Evening Post on the 2nd April lamented the fact that the future of Southmead and Frenchay hospitals will be decided by bureaucrats in Whitehall.
Professor Paul Abrams wrote to point out Bristol patients are long-suffering and that Bristol hospitals are in a mess with 3 sets of old buildings offering very poor facilities for patients. Bristol consultants have been pleading for modernisation and rationalisation for a long while. However, their views have not been supported by politicians. Professor Abrams pointed out that cities in the UK of a similar size to Bristol have extensively modernised their hospitals and now attract star status. Examples include Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester and Leeds. Doctors in Bristol are hugely frustrated by their inability to move forward into a modern efficient service at the centre of which would lie the best patient centred care.
David Martin, Conservative parliamentary spokesman for Bristol South West, wrote to say that 2 years ago keeping 3 hospitals in Bristol was considered to be a viable option. Since then it has been stated that savings must be made to close the deficit and this will mean the end of 24 hour accident and emergency services at Southmead as a possible option. Local residents are concerned that changes are being made not solely on clinical grounds but are being influenced and distorted by financial considerations.
People who attended a meeting held at BAWA in Southmead Road were insistent that Southmead should not lose its hospital. People living here dont want to have to travel across the City.
There has been strong support for a campaign calling for a Minor Injury Unit to be provided at Thornbury Hospital.
Calls have been made for a maternity centre to be included in the £25 million community hospital plans for South Bristol.
Ben Bennett, Project Director with Bristol South and West Primary Care Trust wrote to the Evening Post on the 17th April. He outlined his plans for the hospital including a range of out-patient clinics, diagnostic testing, and day surgery which would move from the City centre to the local hospital. There would also be an expansion of walk-in services. There would be improved services for older people through a single team of health and social care staff working from a local purpose-built facility. Mr Bennett stated that it was necessary to make sure that the beds are being used as effectively as possible and that community-based services are improved.
Research
Professor Jane Plant told a conference in Bristol that dairy products should carry a cigarette-style health warning. She has been investigating the link between diet and cancer and believes that giving up milk could be the key to preventing breast and prostate cancer.
It is claimed that new creams and gels that combat the AIDS virus have the potential to save millions of lives. Dozens of the microbicides are currently being developed and 2 will undergo large-scale effectiveness trials in the UK. The microbicides are applied to the vagina or rectum before sexual intercourse. They work by killing, disabling or blocking the HIV virus that causes AIDS. The products are not as effective as condoms and are not intended as a substitute. Experts believe that their regular use will have a bigger impact on the AIDS epidemic than haphazard wearing of condoms. Twelve thousand women are expected to take part in the 3-year trials to be held in Africa.
Promoting partner reduction is crucial in the battle against the spread of AIDS. It is argued that if people did not have multiple sexual partners, there would not be the global AIDS pandemic. It is said that encouraging partner reduction has been over-looked in the most current HIV prevention programmes.
More than 1000 children in the South West aged under 16 are thrown out of home each year by parents who hit, neglect or reject them. One in 5 is physically or sexually abused whilst away from home. Few of the children are ever reported missing to the police by the parents. The Childrens Society is appealing to people in Bristol and the surrounding areas to help the vulnerable youngsters.
Researchers in Bristol are hoping to develop a simple blood test which will predict how badly people will suffer with osteoarthritis. Dr Sharif has identified a bio-marker for the disease. He and Dr Kirwan are studying patients with early osteoarthritis in order to learn more about how the disease originates.
Bristol researchers have found no evidence to suggest that children who receive whooping cough vaccine have a higher risk of developing allergies and asthma. This work is based upon the Bristol-based Children of the 90s project and was published in the BMJ recently. Dr John Henderson, paediatrician, specialising in respiratory problems, led the team of researchers who looked into the whooping cough vaccine.
Mr Dilley, from Cotham, injured the ligaments in his knee after playing rugby. He subsequently developed arthritis of the knee. He was found to have a large hole in the cartilage. He was referred to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. A sample of healthy cartilage was taken and was sent to Denmark where it was grown in culture. A few weeks later a second operation to implant a new piece of cartilage which had grown to around the size of a raisin was implanted into the knee. Professor Bentley, from RNOH, said This development is important as previously the only alternative was knee replacement which, for younger patients, is unsatisfactory.( this is an experimental procedure Ed.)
A study carried out in the Department of Social Medicine in Bristol has shown that older people do not necessarily need more hospital treatment than young people. The findings are published in the BMJ. The results of the study suggest that health care needs increase closer to death regardless of age. Professor Ebrahim said These data show that it is the cost of dying and not the cost of aging that is putting strain on the NHS.