Do you need to find information for patients?

According to NHS Evidence, a recent research shows that 53% of professionals are most likely to be looking for patient information specifically when conducting a search for health and social care information.

NHS Evidence provides access to more than 8,000 pieces of accredited patient and public information including fact sheets, patient health questionnaires and guidance on conditions, treatment choices and support to help patints and carers make informed choices.

You can browse the leaflets by subject, alphabet or publisher and you can print them.

Should patients be given a voice in drug-safety reporting?

An oncologist, Ethan Basch, wrote in the March 11 issue of NEJM, that current clinician-based approach to adverse symptom reporting is based on clinicians’ impressions of patients’ symptoms, not on patients’ direct symptom reports. He said that evidence has shown that clinicians responsible for collecting and reporting adverse symptoms in clinical trials systematically downgrade the severity of patients’ symptoms and often miss the side effects, as a result vital information about drug safety is missing .

He argued that doctors, researchers and regulators should pay more attention to patients’ symptom reports while taking a drug because it could help identify symptoms earlier during a course of treatment and reduce preventable harm.

He said that technologies are now available for collecting information directly from patients and patients should be given the tools to self-report adverse symptoms in clinical trials such as online reporting between clinic visits, this can capture a lot of baseline symptoms before the drug is approved including those symptoms that researchers did not anticipate.

He concluded that “patient self-reporting would enhance the capture of subjective elements of safety information and patients are entitled to know the impressions of their peers”, such information would also help clinicians to evaluate the drugs.

Source: "The Missing Voice of Patients in Drug-Safety Reporting". NEJM 362(10):865-869 (full text via Athens)

Hospital doctors' memory sticks threaten data security

Two doctors surveyed their colleagues at a teaching hospital in London and found that 92 out of 105 held unsecured memory sticks, 79 held confidential patient information but only 5 were password protected. The authors said this is a clear breach of data security, reported the BBC.

They claim that the findings reflect the lack of security across UK hospitals and beyond.

Although hospitals issue doctors with chip-and-pin cards to access NHS databases and patient records, many doctors increasingly rely on their own memory sticks to store patients data tradidtionally written in doctors' notebooks.

The DH said "any breach of patient security is unacceptable…...The NHS locally has legal responsibility to comply with data protection rules." The survey is published in today's Health Service Journal.