New core standards for Assistant Practitioners are published today by Skills for Health, the Sector Skills Council for healthcare.
The standards were developed in response to requests from employers and commissioners concerned at variation in the responsibilities, education and training of staff employed in the role.

The ESPRIT* Group of leading UK transplant clinicians, pharmacists, and primary care representatives is calling today for greater awareness of the potential risk to transplant patients of an inadvertent change in their immunosuppressive therapy. This follows the introduction in the UK of Deximune®, a new formulation of the immunosuppressant ciclosporin.

A new paper to be published in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG) examines the relationship between abortion and domestic violence. The authors call for greater awareness about domestic violence, and underline the need to support women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies associated with intimate partner violence.

A new study from Bradley Hospital and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, as well as two other institutions, adds to mounting evidence that clinicians consider irritability as a symptom when diagnosing pediatric bipolar disorder.

The number of people who each year die or are severely disabled by stroke could be substantially reduced through a cheap blood test and simple inexpensive treatment.
There is too little attention paid to stroke risk, compared with recognition of symptoms once a stroke has occurred. That is the opinion of Professor Graham Hughes, who discovered [...]