23 May 2025 (Friday) - Healthcare Science Bulletin

The NHS healthcare science bulletin appeared in my in-box today. You can read it by clicking here.
 
It started off with an update on the changes to the NHS management structure. Something about which I remain very cynical. The NHS has major changes to its management structure with annoying regularity. By the time any practical changes start filtering down so there is another top-down change instigated and no change ever has any time to actually take effect. No change is ever critically evaluated; every one is brought in at the whim of whoever is in a position to order the change. What the NHS needs is no change to allow the previous load of changes to take effect and be assessed.
 
There was then a paragraph about two people who had been awarded an MBE for “services to healthcare science”.
This sort of thing *really* annoys me. There are countless people up and down the country running scout groups and Women’s Institute and soup kitchens and dog socialization groups (cough cough!) who as unpaid volunteers do sterling things year-in year-out… and here’s two being given an MBE for doing the job for which they are paid.
 
AI, innovation, use of NHS data… there was actually quite a bit of stuff in this newsletter including a review of the Sullivan review which has identified a serious safeguarding risk in the current process of re-assigning gender and sex identity in medical records for children and young people. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has directed that the process for changing NHS numbers and gender markers for children and young people under eighteens is stopped with immediate effect.
Leaving aside the politics of the matter (which I wouldn’t want to touch with a barge pole!) this is the sort of thing I need to know – a practical directive.

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