Advice for an NHS patient who wishes to complain

Who should I complain to?

Tell someone close to the cause of your complaint such as a doctor, nurse, receptionist, or practice manager as soon as possible (within 6 months of the incident, or within 6 months of discovering that you have a problem). It is often possible to sort out the problem at once. This is called Local Resolution.1 You can telephone or write to the practice complaints officer or to the individual concerned.

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Description About Health Education

What is education? four incomplete answers

• Education is the system used for passing down, from one generation to the next, society's values, attitudes, and culture. Thus are crime, duplicity and double standards (and, on a good day, idealism) perpetuated in a kind of cultural inheritance.
• Education is an activity carried out on ignoramuses by

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Advice to consider before a Hajj journey to Mecca

Hajj is a 5-day Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca to celebrate Abraham's readiness to sacrifice Ishmael. Its yearly date is unfixed. Pilgrims renew their faith shoulder-to-shoulder, as a sacred duty, with 2 million Muslims from all over the world. 20,000 travel from the UK, and another 29,000 also make a lesser pilgrimage to Mecca called Umrah.

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Bedside manners in a multicultural world

Eastern manners

Do not expect an Afro-Asian to answer intimate questions,without first explaining about confidentiality.

• Avoid prolonged eye contact and loud speech (indicates lack ofrespect).
• Control your gesticulations (thethumbs up sign is consideredrude).
• A psychiatric referral may destroy eligibility formarriage.
  

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Nocebo effects

Pharmacists often leaflet customers with long lists of their drugs side-effects, which, like Voodoo death, may become self-fulfilling prophesies. When one of the authors (JML) gives diamorphine IV to patients having a myocardial infarction, he says

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Psychosomatic linkages

Endorphins, catecholamines, cortisol, and psychoneuroimmumunology. NB: It is not the case that there is a placebo-responsive personality.

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