Guidance Notes and Best Practice Guides
LLUK: Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) have published the brand new National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Career Development roles. The new NOS are relevant to those in advice & guidance roles working with all ages across the UK. They have also produced a series of example job profiles which can be used to support a range of HR and staff development activities. A brand new NOS User Guide for the lifelong learning sector will also be available at the end of March.
NICE: GPs in areas of high HIV prevalence should offer routine HIV testing when registering new patients and to anyone who has a blood test, says NICE. The call comes as NICE publishes 2 pieces of complementary guidance aimed at increasing the uptake of HIV testing among people from black African communities and men who have sex with men.
Advances in medicine mean that HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was 30 years ago, and can now be successfully managed with antiretroviral therapies. But too often people are diagnosed late, by which time the virus has already damaged their immune system. Late diagnosis is one of the biggest contributing factors to illness and death for people with HIV.
NICE: The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has published its clinical guideline on the diagnosis & management of tuberculosis and measures for its prevention & control. A partial update of NICE clinical guideline 33 (published in March 2006), the new recommendations focus on the diagnosis of latent TB using interferon-gamma tests (IGT).
NICE: NICE has published a guideline for the care of people with diabetic foot problems in hospital, as the number of people with diabetes continues to rise. Each year in the UK, around 5,000 people with diabetes undergo leg, foot or toe amputations, equivalent to 100 a week.
Treating diabetic foot problems also has a considerable financial impact on the NHS through outpatient costs, increased bed occupancy & longer hospital stays. Implementation tools, including a podcast, slide set, costing report and baseline assessment, are available to help healthcare professionals put this guidance into practice.
OFT: The OFT has published a guideline for businesses about the types of land agreements that may infringe competition law. Until now, agreements between businesses concerning land have benefited from special treatment and have been excluded from the UK competition law prohibition on anti-competitive agreements.
However, from 6 April 2011 this exclusion will be removed and restrictions that prevent, restrict or distort competition will be void & unenforceable. Companies involved in anti-competitive agreements can also face fines of up to 10% of their annual worldwide turnover.
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