ProNurse

  The chief medical officer for England, Dame Sally Davies, is to contact medical staff about concerns young children and some adults are not getting enough vitamin D. Government guidelines recommend some groups, including the under-fives, should take a daily supplement. However, recent research found that many parents and health professionals were unaware of the advice.

  Autism: Brainwaves 'show risk from age of six months'  It may be possible to detect autism at a much earlier age than previously thought, according to an international team of researchers. A study published in Current Biology identified differences in infants' brainwaves from as early as six months

By Jeremy Laurance Patients were 'routinely neglected', says most savage indictment of NHS trust How hundreds died after basic care was ignored The worst hospital scandal in more than a decade has triggered the biggest review of safety in the NHS since the Labour government came to power. Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, announced an unprecedented five separate reviews of ...

By Jeremy Laurance MPs say alternative medicine diverts funds from more effective treatments The National Health Service should stop funding homeopathy, a Commons committee said yesterday. MPs on the Commons Science and Technology Committee said there was no evidence that the complementary medicine worked. To continue funding it risked harming patients who chose ineffective homeopathic remedies in place of effective ...

By Jeremy Laurance Do doctors kill? Ray Gosling claims that, in contravention of the Hippocratic Oath, some have helped patients end their lives and have even turned a blind eye while others - friends or family - carried out the deed, as he did for his dying lover. He is almost certainly right about the former, but almost certainly wrong ...

By Craig Brown Removing the display of sweets in shops and restricting the sale of high-calorie food near schools are among radical government proposals to make Scotland the first country in the world to successfully tackle obesity. In a report launched yesterday, the Scottish Government said the country's obesity problem would cost taxpayers an estimated GBP 3 billion a year ...

By Roger Dobson Antibiotics are being investigated as a new way to treat chronic lower back pain. It's thought that up to one in four cases may actually be caused by infection and not by mechanical problems such as poor posture or improper lifting. In a Danish study, more than half the patients were either cured or much improved after ...

By Enda Feeney One in ten children suffer mental health problems, an expert has warned. And a further one in 50 of our under-18s will also suffer a severe and disabling condition that will merit mental health care. Colman Noctor, a child psychotherapist, said youngsters often develop conditions such as depression, eating disorders and anxiety. 'Many children can take on ...

By Gina Kolata The P.S.A. blood test, the popular screening test for prostate cancer, saves few if any lives and exposes large numbers of men to risky and unnecessary treatment, two large and rigorous studies have found. The findings raise new questions about the rapid and widespread adoption of the test, which measures a protein released by prostate cells. It ...

We are very pleased to announce that the ProNurse Newsletter is now live. It’s short and sweet with all the links to very best bits of the past fortnight. We know that nurses are busy people so now you can have a regular snapshot of the most talked about articles, quizzes and discussion topics come straight to your mail box. Now ...

By Jenny Hope The annual £115million cost of giving flu jabs to the elderly may be a complete waste of money, a major review said yesterday. The injections fail to prevent deaths or provide the expected health benefits, according to researchers. They analysed data from 75 studies to determine whether vaccination of older people works. The researchers - whose findings ...

By Alison Dayani Rising numbers of military casualties from Afghanistan has caused a crisis at Selly Oak hospital which has been forced to transfer at least 200 local patients to other health units, a Government report has revealed. The health unit, which treats all servicemen and women injured in action, has had to remove local sick people so that medics ...

  A reduction in training places for nurses in London is "deeply concerning", the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has warned. NHS London is cutting the number of trainee nurses from 2,000 to 1,580 a year. The organisation claims the change will allow it to raise standards of teaching. But the RCN warned of the possibility of "chronic shortages" of nurses, ...

By Yvonne Tarleton They are urgently needed in overstretched hospitals across the country. But Irish nursing graduates - despite the enormous expense of educating them - are being left unemployed because of the HSE's ban on recruitment. And the British health service is only too happy to welcome them as Ireland faces a nursing brain drain. Despite the recession in ...

After suffering 18 miscarriages, Angie Baker hardly dared hope that her 19th pregnancy would be successful. But thanks to pioneering treatment, she is a mother at last. Yesterday, as she cuddled her tenweek-old daughter Raiya, she said: 'She's my little miracle. I can't explain how I feel. I'm overwhelmed. It seems like a dream and I still have to pinch ...

Even the name sounds painful - bruxism, the unconscious grinding and clenching of the teeth that mostly takes place while we are asleep. It affects about one in four adults, with symptoms that can include an aching jaw, headaches, gum problems and the danger of tooth enamel being eroded. The pressure on the teeth during grinding can be 20 times greater ...

More than half of England's primary care trusts have no policy in place to screen newborns for hip problems, a charity investigation has found.

By Steve Connor IVF CLINICS are using a radical male infertility treatment far too frequently despite the risk of long-term health problems to the babies conceived, according to one of the technique's pioneers. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection involves injecting individual sperm cells directly into an unfertilised egg to improve the chances of producing a viable embryo which can then be implanted ...

By Catherine Fegan THEY are just a fraction of the graduate nurses needed urgently in over-stretched hospitals across the country. And these 30 graduates are all smiles at the thoughts of taking up their new health service jobs - in Britain. For these professionals are just some of the 5,000-plus nurses forced to apply to work in hospitals abroad over ...

By Steve Connor Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions. A major research project is to be announced this week that will culminate in three years with the first transfusions into human volunteers of synthetic blood made from the stem cells ...