Compliance levels for mandatory professional competence (PC) assurance are far lower among doctors on the General Division, and the Irish Medical Council (IMC) is looking at ways to improve the figures.

The Irish Medical Council (IMC) has stressed that it is taking the lead in what it hopes will be a system-wide approach to addressing some of the issues highlighted in its own survey of trainee doctors’ perceptions of the clinical learning environment, such as bullying in the workplace.

The last day for recording of medical practitioners’ professional competence (PC) activity for the 2015-16 year is tomorrow (Saturday, April 30), various medical training bodies have reminded doctors.

A new “very exciting” era is beginning for prostate cancer, according to Dr Ray McDermott, Vice Chair of the Irish Clinical Oncology Research Group (ICORG).

It is up to society to determine what constituted an acceptable level of risk posed by the possible relaxing of the lifetime ban on blood donations by men who have sex with men (MSM), although this was likely to be no more than the risk of death faced in a lifetime’s driving, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) believes.

Early childhood immunisation uptake rates are close to meeting targets, with MMR rates currently at 93 per cent — just 2 percentage points below the recommended WHO target of 95 per cent.

Ed Madden, BL, looks at a recent England and Wales High Court case in which a claim was brought on behalf of relatives of a man who suffered from adrenomyeloneuropathy, claiming that the alleged failure on the part of a hospital trust to diagnose his condition in a timely manner had an adverse effect on them.

The new children’s hospital has been described as a significant catalyst for how a new national model of paediatric care will be delivered, by ultimately combining the specialties of the maternity, paediatric and adult hospitals in a tri-located facility.

The National Cancer Control Programme (NCCP) has said it is “disappointed” with some aspects of the Irish Cancer Society (ICS) report on ‘Access to Diagnostics Used to Detect Cancer’.

While debate rages over the safety of MMA, Dr Ruairi Hanley believes the unnecessary deaths occurring in our hospitals due to ED overcrowding and ICU bed shortages deserve more immediate action