Curry May Help In Fight Against Bowel Cancer

Laboratory tests suggest curcumin, a compound found in the yellow spice turmeric, can increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

Curcumin has powerful anti-inflammatory properties and has traditionally been used as an alternative remedy for a host of illnesses.

But early test results suggest it may be able to reduce the development of bowel cancer.

The studies began after it was noticed that British Asians were significantly less likely to develop the disease than non-Asians.

Now a two-year trial by scientists from Cancer Research UK and the University of Leicester aims to recruit for further tests about 40 patients with bowel cancer that has spread to the liver.

Chief investigator Professor Will Steward said: "We are very hopeful. You don't often see results like the ones we have had in the laboratory.

"Of course, we have got the hurdle of translating that into human beings.

"Certainly it is very, very promising and we are cautiously optimistic that we might see an improvement in outcome not just in terms of treating the cancer, making people live longer, giving people a better quality of life but also possibly reducing some of the nasty side-effects of chemotherapy."

TV presenter Lynn Faulds Wood, who survived advanced bowel cancer, welcomed the findings.

She told Sky News Online: "We've known for years that this could with all sorts of conditions, but nobody's really tested it, and what's great about this study, it's going to test it on real people and we'll know in a few years' time if this helps people to cope with chemotherapy so more people can survive.

"I'm cured, but that's just luck. I want it to be better than luck. More people should survive because we know we're doing better with the disease, not just luck."

Researchers hope that within three years they will have established once-and-for-all that one of our favourite curry ingredients is helping to prevent bowel cancer.

Colin Carroll, a 62-year-old compliance consultant who lives near Loughborough, is one of the first patients to join the trial.

He agreed to take part after being diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer in January.

He said: "The diagnosis came as a big shock because I'd had no symptoms apart from some occasional cramps.

"I'd had a few tests which had come back clear and I'd just been booked for a CT (computed tomography) scan when I was rushed to hospital with a suspected intestinal blockage."

Scans revealed bowel cancer which had spread to the liver.

Three days after being admitted to Leicester Royal Infirmary, Mr Carroll underwent emergency surgery to bypass the blockage.

He added: "It's been like a whirlwind. To have something creep up on you like that when you have absolutely no control over it really makes you want to fight back.

"That's why I had no difficulty in agreeing to take part in the trial.

"I've met some amazing people since January and my treatment on the NHS has been fantastic. The way I see it is that I'm being given the best possible chance so in that sense I feel very fortunate."

Dr Joanna Reynolds, Cancer Research UK's director of centres, said: "The Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres network supports research into some of the most novel and exciting new anti-cancer therapies, often providing the first insights into their effect on cancer patients.

"By doing a clinical trial like this we will find out more about the potential benefits of taking large amounts of curcumin, as well as any possible side effects this could have for cancer patients."

Interview Preperation

Emily Gohl from Recruit4health explains how to prepare yourself for your interview

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Good preparation is a key part to having a successful interview beginning with knowing the names and job titles of the people interviewing you.

One of the most important things you can do is prepare answers to questions you may potentially get asked... also rehearse them out loud. This will make you feel more confident and prepared when you walk into the interview room.

It is always a good idea to plan the route to your interview to make sure you give a good impression of being punctual. Find out directions as well as information on parking if you are driving or the nearest railway station or bus stop. If due to unforeseen circumstances you know you are going to be late contact the company to inform them of your expected arrival time and let the agency know you have done this. When you arrive ensure you apologise immediately and explain your reasons.

Interview Questions

Interview questions may vary but in essence they are all trying to establish the following:

• Your skills and experience to do the job
• Your enthusiasm and interest for the job
• Whether you will fit in

If you can answer these questions, using real-life examples to illustrate your points, then you should be able to answer most of the questions that arise including the following frequently asked questions.

1. Tell me about yourself?

This question or something similar usually starts every interview. Your answer should be well-rehearsed, confidently delivered and last between 3-5 minutes.

This is your opportunity to sell yourself and your answer doesn't have any boundaries.

Remember they want to hear you speak and gauge just how confident you are. It is your chance to sell yourself!  

You need to:

Solve your CQC safeguarding worries in three clicks…

With CQC now requiring practice staff to have vulnerable adult training, the launch of vulnerable adult online courses specifically written for dental staff couldn't be more timely. Our Introduction course covers all staff and our Lead course equips your management team for their roles.

The courses are CQC compliant, take around an hour to complete and are a fast, efficient and cost effective way for your practice to meet its legal requirements.

What's more both courses also cover child protection thereby eliminating the need for your staff to take separate child protection courses.

Why you shouldn't take a Counter Offer

Using a job offer as a bargaining chip with your current employer may seem tempting but all too often it ends badly. If you want a raise, then negotiate one on its owns merits or prepare to move on.

1. Employers often make counter offers in a moment of panic but after the initial relief passes,  you may find your relationship with your employer has changed for the worse. You are now the one who is looking to leave, you are no longer part of the 'inner circle' and you may be top of the list if your company needs to make cutbacks.
   
2. Even worse, your company might just want time to search for a replacement, figuring its only a matter of time before until you start looking around again. You might turn down your other offer and accept your employers counteroffer only to find yourself pushed out soon afterward.
   
   80% of people who accept counteroffers either leave or are let go within a year
   

What Not to Include in Your CV

You may have spent years building up the necessary skills and qualifications to come across as the perfect applicant for your dream job. Don’t go and blow it all now by including any of these fatal mistakes on your CV!

Jargon and Fluff
Avoid using acronyms and jargon when writing your CV. Employers will lose concentration if they have to stop and work out the meaning of every acronym on your CV. Also avoid unnecessary fluff – keep it clear, to the point and back up any lofty statements with hard facts.

Comedy email addresses
An inappropriate email address like sillybilly@hotmail.com will mark you out as unprofessional. If you don’t have a professional-sounding email address then set one up before you start applying for jobs, especially if you are posting an online CV!

Irrelevant information
When compiling your CV, don't include irrelevant information and make sure anything you do include can be interpreted as a positive attribute for the job. List your most relevant and transferable skills on the first page and keep the document under two pages long.

How to read a CV

Human capital is the most important asset to any employer, so short listing and assessing the calibre of 300 CV's to identify the 10 best can be a daunting prospect.

Reading the CV

The first step is to match your candidates against your Job Specification. Beyond that, here are some things to look for:

1. Skills: Seek out CV's that describe how the candidate measured their performance using the relevant skill. Furthermore, has the candidate correctly described the skills needed for the role?
2. Achievements: Candidates that describe how they added value to a job through, for example, saving money or increasing sales outperform other candidates that list job duties.
3. Transferable Skills: Career changers that describe relevant, transferable skills.
4. External Validation: Winning awards or being selected to chair working group meetings rarely happen to under performing individuals.
5. Promotion: Steady and consistent promotions are a good indicator that the individual can sustain the enhanced job responsibilities and that the person has been highly regarded.
6. Length of Service: Advantage or Disadvantage?
   Long Service: Some consider many years of service a benefit, others consider the candidate institutionalised.
   Short Stints: Look for signs in the CV. The candidate could be a job-hopper or could be going through rapid fast paced promotions or it may be normal for the sector.
7. Photographs: Ignore photographs/videos when recruiting as they allow for the potential to discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, etc

Clients tell recruiters what they really, really want

Despite the recruitment industry turning over billions of pounds, are agencies always meeting clients’ needs?

Lawrence Hargreaves, managing director of Nicoll Curtin Recruitment

With turnover in the region of £23bn in 2011-12, the UK recruitment industry is clearly meeting a need. So it may come as surprise that there is a huge disparity between what recruitment agencies are delivering and what clients actually want.

New research carried out for IT recruiter Nicoll Curtin illustrates the extent of the gap of this ‘delivery gap’. For example, only 4% of hiring managers say they are “always confident” in the ability of their recruitment consultant to submit candidates of the right quality.

click here

A massive 75% of hiring managers [only 30% of whom had worked with Nicoll Curtin] believe this stems from the consultant failing to understand the requirements of the role.

Similarly, 72% of the 140 hiring managers interviewed believe that recruitment consultants care more about placing a candidate to secure their fee than finding the best candidate for a role.

RAISING STANDARDS

What Not to include on your CV

You may have spent years building up the necessary skills and qualifications to come across as the perfect applicant for your dream job. Don’t go and blow it all now by including any of these fatal mistakes on your CV!

Jargon and Fluff
Avoid using acronyms and jargon when writing your CV. Employers will lose concentration if they have to stop and work out the meaning of every acronym on your CV. Also avoid unnecessary fluff – keep it clear, to the point and back up any lofty statements with hard facts.

Comedy email addresses
An inappropriate email address like sillybilly@hotmail.com will mark you out as unprofessional. If you don’t have a professional-sounding email address then set one up before you start applying for jobs, especially if you are posting an online CV!

Irrelevant information
When compiling your CV, don't include irrelevant information and make sure anything you do include can be interpreted as a positive attribute for the job. List your most relevant and transferable skills on the first page and keep the document under two pages long.

CV's and Cover Letters

Making Your CV Work for You

Until your interview, you are only as good as your paperwork and perhaps telephone manner.

This makes your CV and covering letter crucial. They are essential tools in most job searches. Like any marketing document, a CV should help you sell yourself.

Preparation:

Think about your skills, competencies, qualifications and experience. What are your unique selling points and strengths? Think in terms of what you have achieved.

If you are replying to a specific job advertisement, review what key words and tasks were used in the advertisement. Which of these words applies to you? Use these words in your CV.

Helpful Hints:

Remember that you want your CV to be read and responded to. Include enough information to stimulate interest, but not so much that you bore the reader. If you provide small, digestible pieces of information you stand a better chance of having your CV read. Three pages maximum is preferred, but keeping it to one page is even better! Every word must contribute to the overall message - so keep it brief and ensure that the content is relevant to the job you are applying for.

Successful Interviewing

You rarely get a second chance to make a good impression on a prospective employer, so at your interview it is important that you get it right first time.

Below is some advice on how to prepare for that all important first meeting.

Preparation

Prepare yourself, interviews are two way meetings. They are both an opportunity for the interviewer to find out about you and whether you are a suitable candidate - and for you to find out about the organisation and if the position will provide you with the challenge and job satisfaction you are looking for.

Think about your skills, qualifications and experience and ensure that you can talk confidently about what is written on your CV. Particularly ensure that you can talk about the skills relevant to the position you are going for.

Prepare some questions to ask at the interview. At the first interview it would be wise to restrict your questions to the details of the job and the organisation. Salary and benefit discussions are best left until a second interview or a job offer is made.

Do your homework

Interviews - A 10 Point Plan of Action

Careers expert John Lees FREC offers you a 10-point plan for interview success:

• Plan carefully. Do you know where you are going and how to get there? Who are you seeing? 

• Make sure you know the names of the people who will be interviewing you. Practice saying them if they are difficult to pronounce.  

• There's no such thing as enough preparation for an interview. Find out everything you can about the company and what it makes or does. Look for current news - show you are up to date.

• Why does this job exist? What problems will it solve? What are the Key Result Areas? 

• Remember: employers buy experience. Think about what evidence of achievement you can talk about in the interview; rehearse your success stories. 

Call for ideas on direct access

The General Dental Council (GDC) wants to hear views as it considers whether patients should be allowed direct access to different types of dental professionals.

At the moment, both the ‘Standards Guidance' and ‘Scope of Practice' make it clear that every member of the dental team must work on the prescription of a dentist.

ARR guidance notes now fit for purpose

The National Association of Specialist Dental Accountants and Lawyers (NASDAL) has played a key role in making sure dentists' working in the NHS receive the correct pension entitlement.

New guidance notes to accompany the Annual Reconciliation Report (ARR) have been produced by the NHS Pensions Service (NHSPS) and they are clearer and more comprehensive as a result of co-operation between NHSPS and NASDAL.

Calls for workplace health to feature in Budget

Ahead of today’s budget announcement, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) is calling for improved measures to address the state of workplace health.

Dentist hails advanced aesthetic dentistry

Dr Dhvani Shah is an associate dentist at Oradental in Kings Lynn, and has just graduated from the UCL Eastman Dental Institute with a certificate in ‘Advanced aesthetic dentistry'.

Low staffing levels 'harms elderly care'

The care of the elderly is being compromised in UK hospitals because there are too few nurses, according to the Royal College of Nursing.

No drilling required!

Icon is a caries infiltration therapy that reinforces and stabilises demineralised enamel without the need for drilling or sacrificing healthy tooth structure.

Cabinet members 'bang table' over Lords NHS win

Conservative and Lib Dem ministers have "banged" the table at a cabinet meeting to mark the impending passing of the NHS reforms into law, No 10 has said.

Resistance to antibiotics could bring "the end of modern medicine as we know it", WHO claim

The world is entering an antibiotic crisis which could make routine operations impossible and a scratched knee potentially fatal, the head of the World Health Organisation has claimed.

Texting Patients a must

New research suggests text message reminders could ramp up dental attendance.
Research carried out by the BDA discovered that at least 3.5 million dental appointments are missed in England each year, and is a common problems across the whole of the health sector.
But a study from overseas has shown that text message reminders could be a solution to improve attendance rates.
In a recent trial, dentists in India who sent patients a text reminder found that four in every five people attended their appointment on time.

Does your practice website tick GDC boxes?

Dentists are urged to review their practice websites to ensure they comply with strict new GDC guidance.

UK-wide dental defence organisation MDDUS is advising every practice to check their website includes all relevant and up-to-date information as detailed in the GDC's Principles of Ethical Advertising.

Under the new rules, practice websites must include a range of information including the dentist's professional qualification and GDC number, the GDC's address and contact details, details of the practice's complaints procedure and the date the website was last updated.

MDDUS welcomes the clarity of the GDC's website criteria – which came into force on 1 March – in an age where an increasing amount of information is accessed via the web.

Complaints experts advise private patients

The Dental Complaints Service (DCS) is encouraging private dental patients to talk to their dental professional if they have any concerns about their treatment.

The DCS helps dental patients and dental professionals in the UK resolve complaints about private dental treatment. They aim to do it fairly, efficiently, transparently and quickly by working with both parties.

Staff from the DCS will be at the Vitality Show in London's Earls Court 2, Stand H376 from 22-25 March 2012 to remind patients that the first step if a problem arises is to speak to their dental professional.
The show is the UK's largest health, beauty, fitness and wellbeing event and is at Earls Court Two from 22-25 March.

Dental Nurses Required MOD Positions

Recruit4health are very keen to hear from Dental Nurses who are interested in working for the Ministry of Defence.

Recruit4health have been awarded a 4 year contract to supply healthcare staff to all 3 forces of the Ministry of Defence.

If you are interested in working as a locum through the MOD and would like more information please contact Euan on 01423 739 018 or email euan@recruit4health.com

REC’s ‘JobsOutlook’ paints positive picture

REC’s ‘JobsOutlook’ paints positive picture

Employer Confidence held up last month despite continued economic uncertainty, according to February's 'Jobs Outlook' report from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)

The survey also revealed that the short-term outlook for agency staff is now stronger than a year ago, reinforcing
that the Agency Workers Regulations have not damaged employers plans for building flexibility into their workforce.....Read more