Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality Holds IV National Health System Quality Awards Ceremony

The National Health System Quality Agency has translated and adapted into Spanish the Guide for Implementing the W.H.O. Multimodal Strategy for Enhancing Hand Hygiene, the Technical Reference Manual for Hand Hygiene and the questionnaires for health care professionals and executives.

On December 17th,2010, as part of the 3rd edition of the patient safety and care quality master’s, a round table discussion on patient safety was held at the Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality, at which Autonomous Communities presented different experiences carried out in this field.

Informative document on Law 42/2010 of December 30th, enacted in amendment of Law 28/2005, of December 26th, governing health care measures to combat the smoking habit and regulate tobacco product sale, supply, smoking and advertising.

The National Health System Key Indicators are prioritised elements of information which include the aspects considered most relevant in the context of health and the Spanish healthcare system.
These indicators have been developed in conjunction with the Autonomous Communities through the Information Systems Subcommittee of the National Health System’s Inter-Territorial Council. The methodological framework of reference is the ECHI system (European Community Health Indicators) and the ECHIM project (European Community Health Indicators Monitoring) of the European Commission.

The Citizens’ Network of Instructors in Patient Safety is described in Newsletter no. 5 (p.21) of the Biomedical Research Centre Online, Epidemiology and Public Health.

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The Interterritorial Board approved the update of the National Health System Palliative Care Strategy on December 9, 2010. A consensus has been reached with scientific societies, patient associations and Autonomous Communities regarding this new text, which replaces the text approved in 2007.

The Minister for Health, Social Policy and Equality presents in the Senate the Ministry’s Lines of Work for the Remainder of the Legislature (Ministry Press Office, 17 January 2011)

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• Job offer: Mental Health Counselor (OPS, Washington).

• FisterraSalud offers information for patients and their families prepared by health professionals. It contains information and advice on health problems, diets, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, information on vaccines and links to other sites.

• The Quality Agency in Delicious: Delicious is a free social bookmarking service, which means that users can save their favourites online, share them with others and see the bookmarks of other users. At the present time, the Quality Agency maintains more than 1,900 bookmarks on a range of subjects, such as: Care in childbirth, cancer, ischaemic heart disease, palliative care, diabetes, COPD, ICTUS, mental health, patient safety, and the like.
  Each bookmark is made up by the title, a brief description and a number of identifying labels.
• The Quality Agency in Slideshare:  SlideShare is a tool which, by means of a register of users, enables us to upload our presentations already created in power point, pdf and other formats (with a  maximum of 20Mb), to be stored in a flash format, for viewing online. The presentations are public, regardless of whether users are registered or not.  We can view the presentations through the URL assigned, in a normal or full size. This also enables us to share our presentations by email or embed them with their own player in our website.
  The Quality Agency uses this tool for disseminating the papers given at the conferences it organises or at those where it participates. At the present time, it has 380 presentations and 2 documents.

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