Barch named new director of Conte Center

The Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research at Washington University in St. Louis has a new director. Deanna M. Barch, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, of psychiatry and of radiology, takes over leadership of the center from John G. Csernansky, M.D., the former Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry, who has become the chairman of psychiatry at Northwestern University.
Barch

Barch has been a close collaborator of Csernansky’s throughout the history of the Conte Center, which was established in 2001. It is one of a handful of such centers around the country created to honor former Massachusetts congressman Silvio O. Conte, a longtime advocate for scientific research. Prior to his death from cancer in 1991, Conte had sponsored the Congressional resolution that designated the 1990s as the “Decade of the Brain.”

One in three British nurses attacked at work

Almost a third of UK nurses suffer frequent violence at work, according to new research.

UNISON has condemned the findings, which reveal one of the highest rates in Europe. Only in France are more nurses attacked.

The study, published in the journal Occupational Medicine, found that 29% of UK nurses had suffered frequent violent incidents at the hands of patients or their relatives.

“These statistics should make people in the UK ashamed,” said Gail Adams, UNISON’s head of nursing.

British Government in court for Judicial Review over cap on GPs’ pensions

A Judicial Review sought by the British Medical Association to challenge the government’s decision to cap the pensions of GPs will take place in the High Court, London, on Wednesday and Thursday this week (12th and 13th March 2008).

In 2006, Patricia Hewitt, the then Secretary of State for Health, decided to limit the pensions of family doctors despite agreement in the new GP contract on how pensions would be calculated*. Family doctors saw this as a breach of their agreement with ministers in 2003 and the BMA is challenging the lawfulness of the Health Secretary’s actions retrospectively to change the basis upon which GP pensions are calculated. Some have made decisions to retire on the basis of what they believed had been agreed.