The Department of Health is reminding social care Personal Assistants who worked during the pandemic to apply for a special recognition payment and has also confirmed that those in the independent sector whose employers have ceased trading can now also apply. The online portal which enables personal assistants to apply for the recognition payment will [...]

Health Minister Robin Swann has announced that a design plan will be developed mapping out the future shape of hospital services across Northern Ireland. This will spell out what a reorganised hospital and supporting primary care network can look like and where key services would be provided. It will help move health transformation to a [...]

The Health Minister has today published an ambitious series of actions that will be taken forward over the next three years to help address workforce challenges. The newly published action plan is the second instalment under the Department’s long term ‘Health and Social Care Workforce Strategy 2026: Delivering for Our People’. Minister Swann said: “Our current strategy [...]

Ulster University has announced the appointment of Professor Alex Miras as the first Randox Professor of Medicine providing educational leadership and training at the School of Medicine. Leading obesity authority Professor Alex Miras was appointed to the role following a competitive and rigorous selection process and joins Ulster University this month from Imperial College London. Professor Miras [...]

A new report, 'Where next for NHS nurses' pay', has again found that a 3% pay award would lead to nurses’ basic earnings falling on average in real terms across different inflation scenarios. The Health Foundation report also highlights the need for a 12.5% pay award for nursing staff, noting that in a higher inflation scenario, [...]

World Blood Donor Day takes place on 14 June each year. The Day was created to: raise global awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products for transfusion; highlight the critical contribution voluntary, unpaid blood donors make to national health systems; support national blood transfusion services, blood donor organizations and other nongovernmental organizations [...]

Health Minister Robin Swann is supporting a call from the Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service for new blood donors to come forward. The Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service’s (NIBTS) appeal coincides with World Blood Donor Day and follows a decline in the number of new people giving blood. Speaking after giving blood at NIBTS headquarters, [...]

The results of world-leading trials being premiered include vitamin C as a potential groundbreaking treatment for sepsis, a disease that accounts for 1 in 5 deaths around the world. Critical Care Reviews, a not-for-profit critical care evidence dissemination platform, today announces it will host the results of five major international clinical trials in the field [...]

Health Minister Robin Swann has praised the positive benefits Men’s Shed have for Men’s Health during a visit to a North Belfast project. Accompanied by Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Michael McBride the Minister met some of the 20 men who use the shed and benefit from its invaluable work with similar projects to improve [...]

Changes in areas of the brain associated with emotion have been identified in people with Takotsubo syndrome according to research presented at the British Cardiovascular Society centenary conference in Manchester. Scientists at the University of Aberdeen also discovered changes in the level of brain activity in areas known to control the beating of the heart. [...]