In brief

Record numbers of Irish patients wait for hospital beds: Some 570 patients were waiting for hospital beds in Ireland’s public hospital emergency departments on 5 January, the highest number since records began in 2004. Cuts to healthcare budgets and an outbreak of H1N1 flu are blamed. The Irish health budget for 2011 has been cut by 5.7% (€765m (£635m; $990m)).

Law will force Chinese to visit elderly relatives: A draft amendment of China’s Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly will require the adult offspring of elderly parents to pay them regular visits, take care of their spiritual needs, and not neglect or isolate them, say reports in China’s media.

New team will investigate maternal and neonatal deaths: A new team based in Oxford University’s National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit will lead the UK’s maternal and newborn clinical outcomes review programme from April 2011. The programme will investigate the deaths of women and their babies during or after childbirth and cases where women and their offspring survive serious illness during pregnancy or after childbirth. It will incorporate the Confidential Enquiries into Maternal and Newborn Health, previously carried out by the Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries.

Sessional GPs suffer from isolation: Professional isolation remains a major issue for sessional GPs in the United Kingdom, shows research by the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund. Problems include limited access to information about education, clinical systems, and professional support structures. Opportunities for interaction with peers, including feedback, are lacking, it says.

Confidential enquiry wins funding for further reviews: The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) has won its funding bid to continue undertaking confidential case reviews into hospital care. Its chairman, Bertie Leigh, says that the reviews “enable the profession to examine its own work self critically, constantly to examine the gap between what is and what should be.” In 2011 NCEPOD will be publishing studies into surgery in children and perioperative care.

Former Royal College of Surgeons president supports assisted suicide: Terence English, who carried out Britain’s first successful heart transplantation, has joined the right to die campaigning group Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying. Sir Terence said that he would be prepared to help a patient take their own life provided that “safeguards” were in place.