News in brief 2

The Royal College of Nursing and the NHS Confederation have set up a new national forum to help develop black and minority ethnic leadership in the NHS. The forum will provide national networking opportunities and speak out on diversity issues.

www.nhsconfed.org/connecting/bmeforum.asp

The UK has plunged to near the bottom of the rankings of the world’s healthcare systems, after researchers revised what makes up good performance. In 2000 the UK came 10th in the WHO league tables. But new research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine reassessed healthcare performance in industrialised countries, this time looking only at deaths that were avoidable using timely and effective healthcare. The UK came 18th out of 19 countries.

www.bmj.com

An independent study of the Yellow Card scheme for alerting the authorities to harm done to patients from medicines suggests it is ‘in important respects both chaotic and flawed’.

Charles Medawar of Social Audit, and Andrew Herxheimer of the Department of Primary Care at Oxford University, were given access to reports sent in by drug companies and doctors about the antidepressant Seroxat. Writing in the International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine, they said they found evidence that miscoding and flawed analyses of yellow cards led to under-estimation of the risk of suicidal behaviour. This year the drug was banned from use in children.

www.socialaudit.org.uk

Almost half of US doctors responding to a survey would support legislation to set up a national health insurance plan in which all healthcare is paid for by the federal government, says a study reported in the BMJ.

Ann McGuaran