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Over 70% of people think we do not have enough conversations about death. Ann Brady outlines a typical shift working in end of life care When I am on shift my day is a bit back to front, I sleep during the day and work through the night from 10pm to 7am, caring for terminally ill people in their own homes. I will work three nights in a row at a time. I usually wake up at around 1.30pm when I am working, and have a bit of lunch at home, and then I will try to go the gym for around an hour. I may run other errands afterwards, but right now I am also helping deliver fundraising materials for the Great...

Healthcare services need to engage the public early over reforms and not wait until others have united against them North London's Whittington hospital provides the latest excruciating example of how not manage service reorganisations. By mishandling the communication of plans to replace wards with community facilities it has a rebellion on its hands. What hospital managers regarded as an "estates strategy" has now been described in the Camden New Journal, which broke the story , as "a dramatic plan to dismantle the Highgate hospital." It said there had been a "hush...

To extend its audience Leeds and York partnership NHS foundation trust ditch auto-tweets for Pinterest and YouTube This past year our NHS foundation trust has been beginning to get to grips with the opportunities as well as the challenges of using social media at a corporate as well as clinical level. The incentives, to us, are clear – the ability to enter into conversations with different stakeholders, and getting authentic feedback to create meaningful change and improve services. At the same time, we hope social media can help us become more sociable as an organisation. A corporate approach...

What can be learned from the process? Here's our experts' and readers' – suggestions from an online live discussion Patients are the best free resources Paul Hodgkin, chief executive of Patient Opinion : "The person with the greatest incentive to get good care to bed seven is the person in bed seven. That person now has a public voice via Twitter, blogs or Patient Opinion . The public nature of these conversations makes this scalable, cheap and a force potentially capable or really creating a new culture of compassion." We need to 'disrupt' cultures Steve Laitner,...

As public service cuts begin to bite, users need reassuring that their new local watchdog also has teeth One of the less noticed changes in the NHS comes into force at the end of March, when Local Involvement Networks (LINks) will cease to exist. LINks were established in 2008 as independent community organisations to champion the needs and interests of patients, carers and the public. In most cases they were borough-based and relied upon groups of volunteers to represent the concerns of health and social care users. Now this band of volunteers are being given their marching orders, to be replaced...

PHILADELPHIA — The American Association for Cancer Research has appointed Rick Buck as senior director of communications and public relations. Buck, who has more than 20 years of experience in health care communications, will oversee the communications...