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Body armour is not routinely issued to ambulance personnel.

However, the Scottish Government has worked with the Scottish Ambulance Service to enhance the equipment for their specialist operations teams to deal with a specific major incident.

The Special Operations Response Teams (SORT) are specially trained and equipped, including body armour, to deliver life-saving clinical interventions to patients, including members of the other emergency services, who may be injured during certain types of major incident such as firearms attacks.

In any other circumstance where a staff member makes a request for body armour, a risk assessment is carried out in line with Scottish Ambulance Service policy.

Risk assessments were carried out in March this year and covered the Scottish Ambulance Service’s response to gunshot and stabbing incidents; prison incidents, and civil disturbances.

The risk assessment did not result in a recommendation for the issue of body armour to front line staff.

The Scottish Ambulance Service has no plans to introduce body armour for ambulance personnel. The only exception is the body armour available to the Scottish Ambulance Service’s Special Operations Response Team to respond to specific major incidents.

In any other circumstance where a staff member makes a request for body armour, a risk assessment is carried out in line with Scottish Ambulance Service policy.

This information is not held centrally. This is a matter for the Scottish Ambulance Service.

While recognising that post-traumatic hypopituitarism is an important topic, SIGN is unable to include it in the remit of this guideline. A proposal to develop a separate guideline on this topic has been received and it is currently being assessed for inclusion in the future Healthcare Improvement Scotland work programme.

As table 3.01 on page 29 shows the resource budget is increasing in the Health portfolio from £11,128.4 million in 2012-13 to £11,841.4 million in 2014-15 – a significant cash terms increase of £713m, or 6.4 per cent. In real terms, as shown in Table 3.02, this is a rise from £11,128.4 million in 2012-13 to £11,270.8 million in 2014-15 in the resource budget.

Territorial Health Boards, who provide frontline point of care services will receive above inflation increases in resource in 2013-14 and 2014-15 of 3.3 per cent and 3.1 per cent which represents real terms increases of 0.8 per cent and 0.6 per cent respectively.

In addition, the short to medium term outlook will see capital resources under severe pressure given the significant real terms reduction in capital resources available to the Scottish Government over the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review period from 2011-12 to 2014-15. In response to this situation however, the Scottish Government has put in place arrangements to support a programme of £2,500m of revenue financed investment across Scotland to boost infrastructure investment. Of this total investment, £750m is being directed towards projects within Health as Non Profit Distributing (NPD) projects or via the hub initiative.

The meeting with the Thalidomide Trust was held in London on 17 July and was attended by a Scottish Government official. Members of the trust and National Advisory Council, along with a Scottish Thalidomider highlighted the benefits the grant had brought to Thalidomiders across the UK and how many were relying on its continuation to meet their long term healthcare needs and financial commitments.

The trust and advisory council agreed at that meeting to provide further evidence to strengthen their case, particularly in relation to the devolved administrations where health and social care systems differ from England. This report is due to be published in December.

Also as part of the charter a leaflet has been published on Communications and Participation. This leaflet clearly states that in communicating with patients, staff should ensure that any information provided to patients meets their needs.

This would include the need for boards to provide communications in another language other than English and/or by an interpreter. We would therefore expect boards to include in their local access policy access to interpreters and communication policy in relation to other languages. The leaflet is available at http://www.hris.org.uk/patient-information/information-about-health- rights/charter/communication-and-participation/what-can-i-expect-from-the-nhs/.