Despite fiscal stress, public confidence in the National Health Service (NHS) remains strong; privatisation has not hollowed out the service. But if long term challenges are to be overcome, pragmatism not rhetoric should be the guide.

BACKGROUND Systems and processes for prescribing, supplying and administering inpatient medications can have substantial impact on medication administration errors (MAEs). However, little is known about the medication systems and processes currently used within the English National Health Service (NHS). This presents a challenge for developing NHS-wide interventions to increase medication safet...

Although there are large numbers of people in the UK who are hearing-impaired or cannot speak English, signing and translation services in the NHS are all too often woefully inadequate.

BACKGROUND In 2004, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommended that an elective caesarean section for an uncomplicated pregnancy should not be carried out before 39 completed weeks due to increased risk of respiratory morbidity in newborns. We describe the trends and variation across 63 English NHS trusts in the timing of elective caesarean section (CS) for low-risk singl...

The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has proposed changes to the English National Health Service (NHS) that will extend the hospital market introduced by “New Labour” in the 2000s. 2 This was the second era of hospital competition within the NHS; the first, the “internal market,” applied throughout the UK from 1991 to 1997. Studies of the NHS markets have generally used one of two paradigms, e...