Search results for: responding

• Victoria will enact the only legal voluntary assisted-dying scheme in the country in a move met with mixed emotion. Labor government-proposed legislation won narrow support in the state’s upper house on Wednesday after 28  hours of continuous debate and the second of two overnight sittings. Advocates for voluntary assisted-dying welcomed the passage of the legislation through the state’s upper house despite the amendments.
• With the evolution of smartphones, the Australian Communications and Media Authority reported in 2016 that 5.78 million Australians had a mobile phone, but no fixed-line phone. When children were once taught to dial 000 on the landline, the raft of security and user features on mobiles is adding complexity to teaching kids how to respond in an emergency. An app called Emergency + had been developed to help make it easier for kids when responding to an emergency using a smartphone.
• According to reports, some well-known Australian companies are investigating whether they can encourage female employees to focus more on their careers by paying for their eggs to be frozen. News Corp reports that the companies are already in negotiations with Australia’s first dedicated egg-freezing clinic. The move would follow the lead of major US companies including Apple, which pays up to $20,000 to freeze its workers’ eggs.

• More than twenty eight percent of priority 1A ambulance jobs – the most life-threatening category – had a response time over ten minutes in January to March two thousand and seventeen, according to the latest Bureau of Health Information Quarterly report. More than one in three emergency category patients waited longer than fifteen minutes for an ambulance from the time a triple zero call was answered. A total of ninety four point seven per cent of ambulances responding to P1s arrived within half an hour, the report showed.
  
• Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne has been given a one-month racing ban after pleading guilty to taking a banned appetite suppressant. Payne told the inquiry she knew Phentermine was banned on race days but thought it was permitted during trackwork. Once a sample provided by Payne shows the substance has left her system, she can resume trackwork.
• Health professionals remain at the very top of the Australian public’s regard, according to the latest Roy Morgan Image of Professions Survey. The two thousand and seventeen poll revealed nurses, doctors, pharmacists and dentists all rank in the top six professions people trusted the most.

• “One-stop shops” aimed at speeding up cancer diagnosis are being introduced across England. The aim is to catch the disease earlier and prevent patients from being referred for several tests for different forms of the illness. Patients often face delays when they have non-specific symptoms. NHS England says this is a “step change” in the way people with suspected cancer are diagnosed and treated. The rapid diagnosis and then treatment of cancer can be vital in saving lives.
• A hospital trust has caused outrage after it described using formula milk as “artificially” feeding babies. Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust used the term as it announced it would no longer provide formula milk in its maternity wards to mothers who had chosen not to breastfeed. A spokeswoman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust told the BBC its decision not to routinely provide formula milk to mothers who chose not to breastfeed was part of its commitment to promote breastfeeding.
• Thousands of ambulances are being prevented from responding to life-threatening nine nine nine calls every day because they are tied up at A&E units, in a significant continuing breach of NHS patient safety rules. The Guardian can reveal that almost 600,000 ambulances faced delays of more than 15 minutes in their crews handing a patient over to hospital A&E staff in the past 3 months – something NHS rules say should never happen. Previously unpublished NHS figures show for the first time that the problem of A&E handover delays is 3 times worse than that portrayed in NHS England’s official statistics.

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• The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RDFS) will give indigenous Australians from South Australia free B-strain vaccine against the deadly meningococcal disease.

• Researchers from Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre have developed the liquid biopsy, a blood test that looks at minor fragments of DNA emitted from cancer cells into the bloodstream, called circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA).

• Queensland researchers were able to create a beating human heart muscle by using stem cells. This technology will allow researchers to now perform experiments on human heart tissue, screen new drugs, and investigate heart repair.

• Willows is one of four nursing homes across the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge taking part in a £400,000 pilot scheme. Jointly funded by the prime minister’s challenge fund (which awarded £50m to 20 pilot projects in England to improve access to general practice) and the local clinical commissioning groups, Health 1000 is a dedicated primary care practice providing 431 residents of the homes with 8am to 8pm, seven-days-a-week GP support, as well as training and advice for staff and help from a consultant geriatrician.
• The Government has stated that nearly 700 GPs have sought early retirement due to ill health since since 2010. Responding to a parliamentary question from the Labour Party, health minister Steve Brine revealed that 5,437 GPs retired before the age of 60 between 2009/10 and 2016/17. Of these, 4,753 took voluntary retirement, while 684 retired due to ill health.
• The Duke of Edinburgh is known for his active lifestyle and has generally enjoyed good health well into his later years. As his age has advanced beyond 90, Philip has faced a number of scares. Abdominal surgery, bladder infections and a blocked coronary artery have seen him admitted to hospital on a number of occasions. The first public acknowledgement of his advancing years came as he was preparing to turn 90 when he stepped down as president or patron of more than a dozen organisations ahead of his milestone birthday.