GPs should urge patients ‘to go online’

December 8, 2015   Carers, Featured Article, health, internet
By Hugh Pym Health editor

GP practice should get 10% of patients to go digital by 2017.

GPs should actively encourage patients to go online for booking appointments and ordering repeat prescriptions, according to a review of digital services in the NHS in England.

Baroness Martha Lane Fox, former internet entrepreneur and government adviser, wants the NHS to push forward with an IT revolution.

Her recommendations include ensuring every NHS building provides free wi-fi.

She says every GP practice should get 10% of patients to go digital by 2017.

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86-year-old man caring for his disabled wife says ‘I am at breaking point’

December 6, 2015   Carers, Featured Article, Older care, Social care, ukcuts

As squeeze on social care funding intensifies

86-year-old man caring for his disabled wife says ‘I am at breaking point’ as squeeze on social care funding intensifies

Michael Knowles, Reporter / Thursday 3 December 2015 / News

An elderly man says he has been driven to a nervous breakdown because of failures in social care.

Ralph Wakeling, 86, has spent the last ten years caring for his disabled wife with support from carers.

But the father of three says carers do not turn up when they are supposed to, forcing him to get his wife out of bed, wash her, and lift her into a stair lift so she can get to the toilet.

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Dementia victims ‘written off by families’

December 4, 2015   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia

Relatives and care staff found to be too pessimistic about activities sufferers can manage which could worse the condition

  • Alzheimer’s disease sufferers worse when their families give up on them 
  • Families and care home staff believe sufferers cannot do leisure activities
  • Researchers found dementia sufferers benefited from regular stimulation
  • Patients suffer greater agitation when the illness progresses  

By Fiona Macrae for the Daily Mail

Published: 00:48, 4 December 2015 | Updated: 01:15, 4 December 2015

Elderly people with dementia are too readily written off by relatives and carers, research suggests.

A study of care home residents found staff and families were overly-pessimistic about the types of activities that relations and patients were capable off.

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