London Writers Week is here

A special week focusing on the future of new writing is just about to launch at Central St. Martins, London.  From the 8^th July events will be held to celebrate new writing talent in the UK.

Jennifer Tuckett, Course Leader for MA Dramatic Writing, in partnership with the British Writers Council, will be overseeing the week’s events.  She will be joined throughout the week by professionals who have led the way in the UK in terms of new writing training. 

The week’s aims are to provide access to and showcase the best new ideas going on in terms of new writing in the UK.
Kicking off on 8^th July is a free event offering access to the Masters and work of the MA Dramatic Writing course from the last year.  The theme will be ‘How to Teach Dramatic Writing’ and the day is happening as part two of the Year of Experimentation, a two year investigation into the future of dramatic writing training in the UK.

The contents and speakers on the day show the professionalism that is involved in making this an exciting opportunity for upcoming writers, directors and the like:

• David Edgar, playwright, founder of the UK’s first MA in Playwriting and former President of The Writers Guild of Great Britain
• Caroline Jester, former Dramaturg for 11 years at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre
• John Yorke, creator of the BBC Writers Academy
• Philip Shelley, creator of the Channel 4 screenwriting course
• Lucy Kerbel, creator and Director of Tonic Theatre
• Steve Winter, Executive Director of the Kevin Spacey Foundation
• Natasha Freedman, Head of ENO Bayliss at the English National Opera.

The event will be followed by the MA Dramatic Writing graduation showcase, which is also free to attend.

Details

Date: Wednesday 8 July 2015

Times: 9am-6pm
Location: Platform Theatre, Central Saint Martins, Handyside Street, London, N1C 4AA
Price: Free
Event capacity: 300

Free tickets, further details on and a confirmed schedule for the Masters day can be found here

You can book your free tickets to the MA Dramatic Writing graduation showcase here 

Please note tickets will be allocated on a first come first served basis and you are welcome to attend all or part of the day.

Other payable courses are available with limited spaces led by the talents of Philip Shelley and John Yorke.  Visit www.londonwritersweek.com for information on all of the courses and events.

London Writers Week’s partners are Central Saint Martins and The Guardian newspapers’ Guardian Masterclasses and London Writers Week is being supported by The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and Writers at Work Productions.

Don't forget that new writers can take confidence in Words Worth Reading for support services in script editing and manuscript proofreading to name but a few.  

GP training taking a fall

Story taken directly from pulsetoday.co.uk

"A fifth of GP training places in the UK remain unfilled after two rounds of recruitment according to official figures obtained by Pulse, raising serious questions about Government’s promises to increase the GP workforce.

Data supplied by NHS Education Scotland show that just 80% of the 3,641 available training places across the UK have been filled ahead of the August training intake.

Education bosses in England have refused to confirm that the figures are correct, but they come shortly after the health secretary rolled back on his pre-election commitment to introduce an 5,000 additional GPs by 2020, saying this was only a ‘maximum’.

The figures are disastrous for education bosses and mark a widening shortfall in filled GP training places.

Last year, at the same stage, around 13% of places remained unfilled in England and 11% in Scotland after the unprecedented third round of recruitment - a situation that the GPC described as the ‘worst ever’.

The shortfall comes despite the health secretary boasting there had been 300 more applications to GP training this year in his ‘new deal’ speech, although Pulse later revealed this was because failed applicants had been allowed to retake entry exams.

According to the figures, around 2,918 places have been filled across the UK so far, with a third round of recruitment in England to follow.

No figures were available for England or Wales, but Scotland have filled just 240 of the 305 GP training places on offer, 79% of the total and increase of just 9% on the first round.

Health Education England has yet to publish the vacancies for GPST1 recruitment in England despite the final deadline for training place uptake having passed on 11 June, but these UK-wide figures suggest it will struggle to meet its current target of 3,250 graduates entering general practice by 2016. 

The Government has been under pressure to provide evidence of how it will achieve it’s pledges to drastically increase GP numbers in England, including a pre-election pledge of 5,000 new GPs by 2020, and it’s already delayed target of 3,250 medical students going into GP training by a year.

Pulse revealed last week that Jeremy Hunt has begun to distance himself from the election promise of 5,000 new GPs when, at the announcement of the ‘new deal for general practice’ two weeks ago, he said: ‘We are leaving some flexibility [in the target] because in some parts of the country it is very hard to recruit GPs.’

And last week he added that 5,000 looked like the ‘maximum’ achievable by 2020.

The DH declined to comment on today’s figures, adding the breakdown of figures for England would be available ‘shortly’.

NHS Education Scotland said that the remaining training places will still be made available for ongoing recruitment with local training boards, and a third round of recruitment will be launched in August for a February 2016 start date.

Dr Krishna Kasaraneni, chair of the GPC workforce and training subcommittee, told Pulse the figures were of ‘significant concern’ to the GPC and said the downward trend in recruitment would not reverse until young doctors could see GPs workload improving and GPs enjoying their work.
He added: ‘Is it surprising that they’re worse than last year? No, because realistically there hasn’t been a great deal of investment – in terms of making things better for general practice- in the last four months, or prior to that.’

‘If last year was the worst ever, this is even worse.’

‘Even when the concept of the new deal was announced with routine seven day working and so on, it goes to show we don’t even have the workforce at present to deal with the normal demands of general practice.’

Deputy chair of GPC Scotland Dr Andrew Buist told Pulse he hoped this would be a wake-up call for politicians.

He said: ‘I hope the Government now are waking up that they’ve got a very, very significant problem on their hands. The figures today don’t really come as a great shock, we knew this was happening.’

‘They really need to start talking up general practice, that’s one of the reasons things are so bad, they’ve been talking us down for the best part of eight years and morale is low. The young doctors, and medical students pick up on that.’"

How much does a CQC inspection really cost organisations?

With the Care Quality Commission seeking views on its proposed fee scheme, and in light of the announcement from the regulator that it is ‘moving to full cost recovery for registration and inspection functions’, pulsetoday.co.uk have published some interesting news articles on just what the cost of a CQC inspection is for GP practices. The following stories are definitely worth a read:

The True Cost of a CQC inspection

The Whole Exercise cost £430,000

Practices forced to spend scores of hours preparing for CQC inspections

A CQC inspection should not be a burden for a well-managed practice

Words Worth Reading Ltd works with GP Practices, NHS organisations, Dentists, and Independent Health and Social Care Providers, managing their CQC registration and ongoing compliance workstreams. We provide a reliable, cost-effective service that focuses on 'doing' rather than 'telling'.

Concerns over Scribd sales

As reported last night by The Bookseller, Scribd has announced that it is "beginning to adjust the proportion of titles across genres to ensure that we can continue to expand the overall size and variety of our service...We will be making some adjustments, particularly to romance, and as a result some previously available titles may no longer be available."

There are concerns that sales may fall by at least 50 percent.

Scribd, in an address to Scribd readers, casts the move as a defensive one in a business that must experiment with its model for survival. Writing that "we are facing some growing pains today," he offers these five points to Scribd reader-subscribers:

• First, it means that romance is here to stay. We are maintaining a robust catalog of thousands of romance titles.
• Second, it means that any affected book you’ve already started reading or added to your library will stay there. Titles affected by the catalog changes will remain in your library for 30 days.
• Third, it means that some books that you saw on subscription may no longer be available. We know this may be frustrating news. But we still have thousands of great titles from small and big publishers alike including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Kensington, Open Road, Harlequin, Draft2Digital, and Smashwords.
• Fourth, we’ll be tweaking our catalog on an ongoing basis, rotating titles in and out, so that romance readers always have something fresh to read.
• Fifth, we’re working hard to establish more mutually beneficial terms with our publishing partners, so that we can continue to grow our catalog.

Golden Rules for creating Information Security Policies

As we continue to work with our health and social care clients, supporting their information governance compliance demands, we are encouraging them all to read through the Gartner report on the Five Golden Rules to creating an effective security policy.

According to this Gartner report, “Policy is an important form of communication about risk, and the impact on the reader will be maximised if the text is well-crafted in organisational appropriateness and writing style.” The report also states that: “Fortunately, the use of a few best practices for the planning and writing of policy can make a big difference in its effectiveness in reducing risk.”

Read “Five golden rules for creating effective security policy” to find out how to:

• Create a process for developing and maintaining your policy

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• Use a structured approach to support flexibility

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• Make sure that your policy is pragmatic by testing it out

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According to this Gartner report, “Badly worded policies can introduce problems such as inconsistent policy positions, the inability to ensure compliance, unacceptably high-risk profiles or unnecessarily high costs.“

Organisations should understand not only the common pitfalls of security policy development, but also how to create and maintain a policy effectively.

Course for Directors of Adult Social Services

The National Skills Academy are running a course for new Directors of Adult Social Services, in partnership with ADASS. 

The programme has been designed  specifically for new Directors who hold statutory responsibility, covering not only the issues arising from a broad span of control, but also the complexities arising from political governance and the need to exert leadership across a wide range of networks.
This highly successful national programme aims to both support the individual and to develop their personal, political and strategic impact and leadership style by offering a package of individualised support over six months, including workshops, a collaborative action-learning set and one-to-one coaching support.

The programme will enable individuals to engage with others in the same position, to share experience and knowledge with experienced directors and political leaders, and to learn from established leaders and senior voices from business, government and social care. It is an unrivalled learning and development opportunity for individuals to shape their leadership role and build their career.

The programme is for

New Directors who are seeking:

• Support in making a successful transition to senior leadership
• A safe, confidential space to reflect on and adapt their leadership style and vision
• To develop their personal, political and strategic awareness and impact
• To improve their ability to work with complexity and the ‘wicked issues’ of public service leadership including integration 
• To increase their resilience and flexibility and ability to innovate and take risks
• To build their peer network and increase their capacity to work with peer learning

Local Authorities who need:

• A director who is equipped and supported to take on the demands of corporate leadership at a time of critical social change
• A director who is able to handle themselves under pressure and who can work with the dynamics of complexity and uncertainty
• A director who can foster strong interpersonal and organisational relationships
• A director who can motivate others and work with resistance
• A director who can be held accountable for delivering a high level of service and hold others to account for improving services
• A director who facilitates others’ contributions, nurtures capability and supports the long-term development and ambitions of their team
• A director who understands how to work in political environments
• A director who can construct partnerships with citizens and communities based on the principles of co-production
• A director who can lead complex transformational programmes to deliver personalisation while maintaining business as usual

Programme structure

The programme has been designed to be as time efficient as possible whilst enabling participants to focus, reflect and get the support they need. Opening with a three day residential at a secluded and comfortable setting, and then followed by an action learning set along with 1-1 coaching, the programme concludes with a final workshop and celebratory event.

The programme is to commence in October 2015, and runs for a 6 month period.

US hospital reports inproper access to patient data

The Maryland-based Meritus Medical Center is currently in the process of notifying more than a thousand patients that an employee with one of its vendors may have accessed patient information outside of their normal job duties.

How many victims? 1,029, according to reports.

What type of personal information? Names, dates of birth, ages, genders, medical record numbers, and treatments and/or diagnosis information. In some instances, health insurance information and Social Security numbers.

What happened? An employee of a Meritus Medical Center vendor may have accessed patient information outside of their normal job duties.

What was the response? Meritus suspended the employee's access to its systems and conducted an investigation. Meritus is working to further strengthen controls related to vendor access to patient information, and is enhancing its existing system monitoring capabilities with regard to vendor access. All potentially impacted patients are being notified.

Details: The incident was discovered by Meritus on May 4 during its routine compliance and self-audit efforts. The employee may have accessed the data between July 2014 and April 2015.

Quote: “Even though we have no evidence that any of this information has been misused, we began mailing letters to affected individuals on June 26, 2015, and have established a dedicated call center to answer any questions they may have,” a notification posted to the Meritus website said.

Source: meritushealth.com, “Notice to Meritus Medical Center Patients Regarding Privacy Incident,” June 26, 2015.