Specialty guidance group: phase 3 project report – Academy of Medical Royal Colleges
This report is aimed at improving the revalidation experience of doctors, appraisers and responsible officers. It considers the results of a consultation of doctors, appraisers and responsible officers on their experience of appraisal and revalidation and the types of support available, and makes recommendations to improve the support available for doctors. The report identifies key areas for further development of the revalidation process over the next few years.

Doubts over unplanned admissions DES as study finds ‘little benefit’ from care plans – GP Online
Written care plans in general practice have had little effect on patient outcomes, a DH-funded study suggests, raising doubts over the controversial new enhanced service that encourages their use for thousands of patients.

An ethnographic study of knowledge sharing across the boundaries between care processes, services and organisations: the contributions to safe hospital discharge – Health Services and Delivery Research
This report addresses recent calls for research to examine the wider sociocultural and organisational context of patient safety between care settings and processes. It develops the idea that health-care services might be seen as complex systems involving non-linear and dynamic interactions between heterogeneous actors. In this sense, the sources and threats to safety emerge from systems-level interdependencies and relationships

How Do Patient-Reported Measures Contribute to Value in Health Care? – IHI Blog
Unlike the HCAHPS or other patient experience surveys, patient-reported measures (also known as patient-reported outcome measures) ask patients to assess their own functional health and well-being before and after a clinical treatment or procedure. IHI blog post that discusses how the use of patient-reported measures holds promise for getting more direct input from patients to help improve care delivery, and for helping organizations evolve into value-based systems.

Patient and Family-Centred Care toolkit – The King’s Fund
Patient and Family-Centred Care (PFCC) is a simple, step-by-step method for understanding what a care experience is like, what needs to change, and which small improvements can make a big difference to patients, families and staff alike. Across the country, teams have implemented the approach to improve services, ranging from paediatric accident and emergency to the care of frail older people, with measurable results.

Accidental awareness during general anaesthesia
The Royal College of Anaesthetists has published The 5th National Audit Project (NAP5) – Accidental Awareness During General Anaesthesia in the United Kingdom and Ireland. This three year study is the largest conducted into awareness during general anaesthesia. Accidental awareness is one of the most feared complications of general anaesthesia for both patients and anaesthetists. Patients spontaneously report this failure of general anaesthesia in approximately 1 in every 19,000 cases, according to this study. The researchers studied three million general anaesthetics from every public hospital in UK and Ireland, and studied more than three hundred new reports of awareness.