Print News Day Story- Emergency Services

February 27, 2008 fran27

HERALDING HAMPSHIRE HEALTH SERVICES

Medical and care services in Hampshire are facing a closer inspection from independent new body, LINk.

Several incidents in the Hampshire health area have encouraged the setting up of a new body. Particularly the incident involving the death of two mothers who died from an identical infection after giving birth at the same hospital on the same day.
Amy Kimmance, 39, and Jasmine Pickett, 29, had their babies at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester on December 21st and within 72 hours they had both died from complications linked to streptococcus A infection – known as Strep A – which normally causes sore throats.
The Royal Hampshire County Hospital missed its target for reducing MRSA last year and had 191 cases of the potentially deadly stomach bug C.diff between April 2006 and March.Its kitchens were severely criticised last year and as a result it now has to submit to six-monthly inspections.

The Local Involvement Network (LINk) will be scrutinising the NHS and local authorities in replacement of community health councils and patient-public involvement forums. Westminster decided to abandon these structures with the forums being scrapped by March. Various strands of the NHS, ranging from doctors’ surgeries to hospitals will be held to account by LINk.

Hampshire County Council is making the arrangements to set up the new network with Westminster providing the cash. The LINk is likely to include members from the forums that are being dissolved. The Council also hopes to attract other people interested in health and care issues, such as volunteers in community groups and charities.

Council leader, Cllr Ken Thomas said: “ The LINk will have a very real opportunity to shape the future of health and social care that will see more personalised services and ultimately put the service user in control of the care and services that they receive”

Hampshire PCT’s director of corporate affairs, Richard Samuel, added: “We whole-heartedly welcome the setting up of a LINk and the added benefits this will bring to the community in terms of joining up and enhancing all the excellent work around health and social care.”

The Council plans to announce how people can join LINk in the coming weeks.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized

2 Comments Add your own

• 1. winchestertutor  |  February 29, 2008 at 11:53 am

  This is a very strong story, so it shows an excellent news sense. The intro is not to bad but subject and verb do not appear to agree on plural (all students note – subject, verb and object must all agree on tense, case and plurality). If anybody does not understand the previous sentence by the way then please get hold of a basic grammar book (such as Hicks – essential english for journalists) and that will sort you out. Mastering grammar is one of those things in life that you just have to sit down and learn by reading a suitable book. Nobody can learn it to you, so to speak. Also it is not unusual to find people who don’t know how to do it, even undergraduates. There’s plenty of such books if you research it (there’s a good one for office workers called Write Right for example). But until you get that under control then you are going to struggle in journalism (this is to everyone not just you). For news reporting style, I still think it is hard to beat Harry Evans’s Essential English for Journalists (same title as Hicks). Hicks is more technical about correct English sentence construction. Evans goes to the next level and shows how to write perfect news reporting style. Lastly of course if you read a lot of newspapers this will improve your style, especially if you read them from the point of view of their writing technique, rather than just for fun. The tabloids are very well written from a technical point of view; broadsheets can vary (Telegraph probably best written). Radio and TV the writing is less tight because the pictures/ interviews are doing the works and they are more informal anyway. If you listen to a lot of informal Radio 1 type news that won’t help you master formal sentence construction, because it is done deliberately in a very informal way (which is not to say that the people doing that can’t write technically accurate English – of course they can).

• 2. chris horrie  |  March 10, 2008 at 4:04 pm

  Hi tehre – please update more often. Blog about what you are reading teh papers – examples of good journalism, bad journalism, etc.

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to comments via RSS Feed