Blog posts of '2015' 'March'

Syringe Labelling in Critical Care areas is an important job for hospitals, it can prevent carelessness on wards and save lives. Dr John A Carter, Chairman of the Safety Committee for the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland published a document detailing how certain drug types, and in some cases, how some individual types of drugs should be labelled.

The term ‘dementia’ is used to describe a set of symptoms that occur when the brain is damaged by specific diseases. These diseases include Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. Vascular dementia is the second most common form of dementia and it is caused by problems in the supply of blood to the brain.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive illness that affects every person differently. This means that the structure and chemistry of the brain become increasingly damaged over time. It can however, be helpful to think of the way the condition progresses as a series of stages. This blog post outlines the characteristics of early, middle and late stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Consistency and clarity of syringe labelling are important elements in the prevention of medical errors. Colour coding syringe labels was first introduced in the UK in 2003 when the new standards for labels were introduced by the Royal College of Anaesthetists. The aim was to standardise colour coding for syringe labelling to prevent medication mix-ups and provide easy to use classification identification system for syringes.

Dementia is one of the biggest health and care challenge our country faces – one that all of society must respond to.

Did you know?

Although there is a small political focus on dementia, the progress is too slow. There will be more than a million people living with dementia by the end of the next parliament and there will not be a family in the country that is not affected.

The Alzheimer’s Society is currently in the process of trying to make dementia a priority for the forthcoming 2015 election. They want the new government to improve the lives of people living with dementia, and they need everyone’s help to make this happen, including yours.

The general election is an opportunity to make sure people living with dementia are better supported through their ‘Dementia Promise’ manifesto. The manifesto sets out 12 actions that the government must take in order to improve the lives of people living with dementia.

12 Actions Include:

1. Commit to increase diagnosis to at least 75% everywhere by 2017
2. Ensure a streamlined diagnosis process to cut waiting times
3. Ensure everyone with dementia has access to a dementia adviser
4. Ensure everyone has the right to a career assessment and guaranteed support
5. Regulate that home care visits should be no less than 30 minutes
6. Fund an annual national dementia awareness campaign
7. Commit to all health and care settings being dementia friendly
8. Ensure all service providers and care works in dementia care have protected dementia training time
9. Demonstrate leadership in creating a dementia friendly society with a commitment that all national and local government employees become dementia friends
10. Ensure every person with dementia has the same state support in managing their condition as people with cancer
11. Double the spend on dementia research, focussing on risk reduction and improving care as well as cure
12. Develop and publish a national plan, jointly owned by government and key delivery stakeholders, to raise the ambition for people with dementia

Their aim is to go to parliament to present the dementia promise to MPs and to talk to politicians about what they can do to make a positive difference to the lives of people affected by dementia.

In next week’s blog, we will present why change is so important to the UK healthcare system.