This book is written for health and social services staff at all levels, including those involved in policy making and management. It sets out a clear framework for understanding carers' needs and describes practical ways to begin to meet them. Each chapter deals with one major need expressed by carers ...
This workshop was arranged to bring together those who were at the leading edge of developing quality assurance in community care for people with learning difficulties, those with mental health problems, people with physical disabilities and frail elderly people. Three main issues were examined: the definition of quality assurance in ...
This pamphlet gives an account of a meeting whose aim was an exchange of information between those with experience of care attendant schemes and those with experience of the needs of those with learning difficulties and their families.
The aim in producing the document has been to offer a quick reference tool for practitioners and others to indicate the sorts of people working in the 'quality' areas and their levels of interest. The entries have been supplied by individual practitioners and managers, as well as being drawn from ...
This document is the result of a working group who had a shared commitment and concern for the lives of people living in long-stay psychiatric wards. The group wishes to acknowledge that for some people a psychiatric hospital will continue to be their home and that the service they receive ...
This booklet is published for S.O.P.H.I.E. (Society of Parents Helping in Education) by the King's Fund. It accompanies a video `Shared Concern' which tackles the difficulties doctors experience when they face the task of informing parents that their baby or young child has a disability. S.O.P.H.I.E. believes this video and ...
In 1977 an exploration into the use of counselling of visually impaired adult persons began in Richmond Adult College, Surrey, where it continued for 2 years. It moved to the ophthalmic department, King's College Hospital in 1980 and continued until 1987. The author formed a group in Richmond for people ...
This publication comprises of two background papers for the colloquium - (1) Continuing professional education for qualified nurses; and (2) A study in staff preparation - a necessity. The first is on the importance of continuing professional education and a study into how this is done. The second paper is ...
This publication, building on the Ordinary Life initiative, describes a project undertaken with 2 community services - one for adults and one for children. A P.A.S.S. evaluation of each service yielded detailed information on what life was really like for service users and pinpointed priority areas for further training and ...
These seven papers detail key lessons from the work of the King's Fund College, which since 1983 has been mounting a programme of educational and field development activities designed to assist networks of local people in addressing the challenges involved in managing psychiatric services in transition. The papers suggest a ...
In 1988 the King's Fund covered a multi-disciplinary panel to consider the following questions and to prepare a statement for discussion at a consensus conference: is there scientific evidence that ICUs cause a decrease in morbidity and mortality; what criteria should be set for admission and discharge to intensive care ...
This paper looks at the attitudes and behaviour in seeking health care of all the general medical practitioners in one family practitioner area - Avon. The results show that this group of doctors find difficulty in receiving help from other doctors, particularly for conditions to which doctors are most susceptible. ...
This paper looks at the role of health authority equal opportunities committees and the part they can play in facilitating the implementation of an equal opportunities policy. It details the circumstances in which equal opportunities committees can be useful, and makes recommendations to improve their effectiveness.
This conference proceedings report is an edited compilation of papers given at a conference for World A.I.D.S. Day. Topics covered at the conference included - resources for the 1990s, community care, role of the voluntary sector and an agenda for the 1990s.
This study describes the various approaches adopted by some DHAs in separating responsibility for purchasing and providing services. The approach finding most favour involves separating the purchaser and provider functions below the DGM (District General Manager) level. The strength of this approach is in enabling the purchaser and provider functions ...
This report presents a number of papers and workshop reports from a conference on family based respite care. The workshop reports discuss: the implications of the Children Bill for children in residential schools and local authority care; respite care and welfare rights; raising the profile of family based respite care; ...
Rising health care costs now confront policy makers and planners with serious dilemmas of choice. This publication seeks to help formulate principles by which choices can be made. It begins with the premise that health demands will outstrip available resources, but argues that this should not mean that every allocation ...
The seventh King's Fund Forum was held in London from 18th to 20th June. The panel was asked to address four questions: (1) Would the detection and breakout of polyps reduce the incidence of cancer of the colon and rectum? (2) Are there other preventive measures which will safely reduce ...
The report attempts to review the main issues surrounding the funding and management of units providing dialysis services to people suffering from end-stage renal failure in the UK for the benefit of health service managers, renal physicians and other staff. The objective is to review the experience and information currently ...
This report examines the kind of work facilitators do, their achievements and the factors that help or hinder progress in a rapidly changing world. Three different models are described - Oxford, Best Friend and Camberwell.
In March 1990 the King's Fund College and NAHA were commissioned by the Department of Health to undertake a survey of the training and development needs of the now DHAs. The survey follows on from the discussion paper 'Managing with authority'. This report presents the results of the survey and ...
The Relief Care Support Group first met in December 1980 when there were a number of workers involved in London relief care schemes. It aims to enable people to get together more formally and spend time sharing and learning from each other. The group was started as a support group ...
This project was undertaken to collect information on the services offered to people with learning difficulties. During the course of the project the idea of collecting `critical incidents' was suggested by some of the participants to elicit gaps in coordination. (For the purpose of this project a critical incident is ...
The primary aim of this workbook is to provide managers, front-line workers, external and internal 'inspectors', informal carers and service users, with a shared framework for consultation and evaluation of the quality of services. It is predominantly concerned with community care; however, it has applications in acute and community services ...
The Mental Health Foundation funded a project to improve working relations between voluntary and statutory agencies in the field of community care, focussing primarily on people with long term mental health problems. This paper is laid out as a series of chapters covering aspects of collaborative work. Each is followed ...
The purpose of this manual is to provide a comprehensive set of organisational standards covering the major aspects of an acute general hospital. This will form the basis of a professional peer review (the survey) the aim of which is to support the staff of hospitals in the provision of ...
Designed to be of practical use to all those with responsibilities for developing medical audit and quality assurance in primary health care, the book describes what is meant by audit, its purpose and who should be included. It reviews the range of activities being used. The report is based on ...
This is a report on the first year of the Organisational Audit project. It describes the project set up by the Quality Improvement Programme to test the applicability of an 'accreditation' type approach to the UK health system.
This report is a selection of keynote papers and reports from workshops held as part of the King's Fund Primary Health Care Group's conferences on quality in community nursing. The papers describe examples of good practice which concern management structures, staff performance, and ways of identifying patient needs and planning ...
This research report attempts to clarify key issues in British nursing for health policy makers. It is specifically aimed at a non-nursing audience, in the hope that it will illuminate important aspects of workforce planning, management and health care delivery for NHS managers and other people concerned with British health ...
This book describes in detail the routine administrative tasks that have to be done in hospital after a patient dies and suggests systems which will ensure that the tasks are carried out efficiently. It lays down clear standards for bereavement officers and hospital staff to enable them to provide the ...
This book is described as being a 'reflective tour of where the NHS is coming from, the world it is likely to face in the 1990s, and some ways in which we could strengthen it'. It covers demography, social and environmental stress, medical developments, public expenditure constraints, and likely themes ...
This paper explains initially why health authority management should introduce ethnic monitoring systems and deals in later sections with how members and managers should use the data to measure and improve their authority's equal opportunity performance. The bulk of the paper is, however, addressed to personnel and other officers who ...
This second edition reflects the significant growth in quality assurance activity, and an increased willingness to share experience and expertise amongst those involved in the field. The directory covers the 192 DHAs in England, and provides comprehensive data from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. It includes a barchart comparing the ...
This paper is intended as a contribution to the Prime Minister's Review of the NHS. It argues that the use of incentives, competition and better management has already led to significant progress in improving efficiency, effectiveness and consumer responsiveness within the NHS. The key challenge now is to build on ...
This training manual has been written over many months by a group of people who brought with them a healthy scepticism of the concept of quality circles. It is offered as a model, no way suggesting a blueprint, but it contains many good ideas which may be adapted to any ...
In this book, top clinicians and senior managers in health services from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand write about their experiences in solving difficult problems in a way that ensures that their organisations continue to strive towards quality services. They describe how they try to resolve ...
This history begins with the foundation of the Lancet in 1823, and ends in 1982 with the restructuring of the National Health Service, when the management of hospitals in isolation from other health services had ceased. The opening chapters consider the endowed and voluntary hospitals, the poor law infirmaries and ...
This document reviews some elements of health services which have been or may be the subject of standards and some characteristics of the standards themselves.
The care given to a random sample of adults who died in 1987 is described retrospectively by relatives and others who had known them. Most praised, or were satisfied with, the care given by general practitioners but both the statistics and the quotations reveal some disconcerting inadequacies in this care, ...
This paper aims to present two main types of information. Firstly, it aims to identify the various factors - demographic, economic and ideological - which have come together to create an unprecedented crisis for those involved in the provision of health and social services to the elderly population. Secondly, it ...
This resource list contains information on selected books, journal articles, films, tapes and exercises which may be useful in training staff or volunteers who are working with `confused', `mentally infirm' or `mentally ill' elderly people. It does not set out to provide a blue print for a programme of training ...
This book is an account of the St. Christopher's Hospice Bereavement Service given by the volunteer visitors. It describes one of the important services developed by the hospice in the care of the dying and the continued care of the bereaved. It is hoped that it will be a guide ...
This report is an in-depth, comparative study of the UK plans and US experience of competition in the supply of hospital services. It shows how both competition and regulation policies have been used to contain escalating costs in the US. American experience raises concerns about the impact of competition on ...