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To examine the content of the new Foundation Years Curriculum for newly‐qualified medical graduates in terms of its patient‐safety and risk‐management emphases. To examine briefly the impact the curriculum will have on medical trainers responsible for such issues.

Relevant sections of the curriculum are examined and reproduced within the article, along with the authors' reflections on theoretical and practical implications of its content, as applicable to current National Health Service (NHS) training of doctors. Areas of agreement with previous guidance given to the medical profession from other sources are discussed.

The curriculum gives an appropriate emphasis to patient‐safety issues. The practical achievement of its broad and ambitious aims will present major, though not insurmountable, challenges to those delivering the training of newly‐qualified doctors within the NHS.

This paper should help those involved in delivering the new curriculum consider the relevant patient‐safety and risk‐management issues that it raises and begin the process of practically achieving them. It should demonstrate the importance of maintaining a patient‐safety outlook as the focus of training for newly‐qualified doctors.

A guideline to the practice of cataract surgery was produced in 2004 by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists. This complemented a guideline to best practice produced in 2000 by the NHS Executive. This paper reviews the guidance given by these documents and examines their clinical governance and risk management advice and usefulness.

The guideline is critiqued in terms of its usefulness to clinicians and health‐care managers. Recent research on the consenting process for cataract surgery is used as a benchmark of best practice and compared with the guideline's recommended methods. The medico‐legal caseload experience of The Medical Protection Society (the authors' institution) is used to discuss areas of concern relating to risk management in cataract surgery of interest to clinicians and managers.

The guideline is felt to be a useful, well‐produced and recommended resource for clinicians and managers with clinical governance responsibilities for cataract surgery services. There was felt to be scope to improve some of the guidance on reporting adverse events following cataract surgery to patients.

This paper will help to inform the gaining of consent for cataract surgery in the light of the latest research in this area, and help train staff in this task.

This paper will be of value to clinicians and managers with responsibility for cataract surgical services. It should help to inform how they set up, review and audit their practice in this area and be useful for staff training. It highlights areas of the guideline which may be of relevance to those without time to read the whole guideline.

This article examines problems in the delivery of healthcare by teams, with special reference to those encountered in the NHS. It identifies best practice in effective management of teams from non‐health‐care settings and seeks to show how these principles can be applied to the health‐care arena. It reviews examples of research into team performance in health‐care delivery, and provides resources useful to those setting up, reorganising or maintaining health‐care teams. It offers practical advice concerning the important factors to be considered when undertaking these activities.

To review guidance on the identification and management of meningococcal disease, with particular reference to primary care. To advise on appropriate strategies for training and professional development in this area for primary care teams. To give an overview of common sources of error in this area of practice, based on cases handled by The Medical Protection Society (MPS) and lessons gleaned from current guidance.

A review of guidance on appropriate approaches to primary care management of this illness and cases of legal claim or complaint handled by MPS.

Common deficiencies and sources of error in the management of meningococcal disease are discussed and elucidated and strategies suggested to avoid their repetition.

General advice is given on clinical approaches to meningococcal disease in primary care, and on the documentation of relevant features in the clinical record.

This paper highlights simple risk‐management issues relevant to community‐based meningococcal disease and aims to reduce the risk of litigation or complaint against primary care practitioners who are involved in its management.

THE IRISH, it would appear, are not a romantic race ! They do not appreciate their works of art, neither do they revere their great writers. As James Joyce so aptly put it—

Articulates the concept of market segmentation and examines, critically, how the main segmentation procedures lead to the conclusions that the main concern ought to be the classification of people in terms of usage of product and attitudes. Examines a new tool available to management (ACORN) a classification of residential neighbourhoods. States that in the UK 1983 General Election it emerged that nearly 40 per cent of the electorate did not vote for the party of their social class. Discusses segmentations in the electoral marketplace, which is preceded by a literature review. Concludes that the application of modern marketing techniques is ongoing in the electoral marketplace with regard to the UK. Finds that ACORN group findings of field research, undertaken to test claims, establishes that political attitudes changed regarding them during election campaigns.

This chapter reviews the literature to contextualize the intervention in the post–cold war era characterized by the momentum of globalization dominated by informal actors beside the legal authority of the state. It indicates how these actors deviate the primary purpose of the humanitarian intervention and create an ungovernable environment of the state particularly when interventions are operated in countries endowed with natural resources. The case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) serves as a model to ascertain such phenomenon in which actors such as states involved in intervention come in collusion with shadow elites, lobbyists and multinational companies to establish clandestine networks of illegal exploitation and smuggling of natural resources. The chapter winds up by suggesting the redefinition of policies of interventions to keep humanitarian intervention in its primary mission while holding actors involved in illegal and smuggling of natural resources accountable.

The SMART Group has been investigating joining methods for ball grid arrays (BGAs). Originally a development of IBM, and expected to be a dominant packaging technology, the BGA is best visualised as a legless PGA. It has the same advantages—high lead count, wide pitch, small area—but does not need holes. The problem of the BGA is that the interconnects are not visible. This places a high demand on process control and material selection — it really is a case of ‘right first time’. The investigation concentrated on this aspect.