Dara Gantly examines a recent report from a European Commission Expert Panel on Effective Ways of Investing in Health, which seeks to outline a new EU agenda on patient safety and quality of care.

Many hospitals do not perform pre-operative assessments of day-surgery patients selected for day surgery despite the importance of the assessments in identifying medical risk factors, Gary Culliton reports.

Winning the 2013 Irish Healthcare Awards Best Patient Lifestyle Education category has seen greater prominence for some structured diabetes education programmes, which continue to grow, writes Gary Culliton, ahead of this year’s closing date.

The numbers of ‘suicide tourists’ going to Switzerland to take their own lives have doubled within the space of four years, reports a study published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have provided a blueprint of the cellular machinery used by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which they hope could lead to design of specific new drug treatments.

New Irish research, published in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care, has called for the provision of specialist training in perinatal bereavement care for all healthcare chaplains.

The Minister for Health Dr Leo Varadkar has started a shake-up of Hawkins House with the announcement that the Secretary General of the Department of Health, Dr Ambrose McLoughlin, will be moving to a new role supporting the implementation of the Healthy Ireland initiative ahead of his retirement next year.

A new public campaign has been launched calling on the Government to ensure community mental health services have the funding they need to provide 24/7 crisis support.

The Medical Council has published criteria for the evaluation of training sites supporting specialist training for doctors — which it has said will be a key quality assurance activity — and expects the settings to meet these 18 principles from January, IMT reports.

The Association for the Improvement in the Maternity Services (AIMS) Ireland is calling for the immediate repeal of the 8th amendment on foot of “the most recent appalling ordeal the Irish health and legal systems have forced a pregnant woman to endure”, IMT reports.