A Patient Safety Alert has been issued around the management of life threatening bleeds (LTB) from arteriovenous fistulae and grafts in patients receiving haemodialysis. The alert signposts to resources produced jointly by the British Renal Society and the Vascular Access Society of Britain and Ireland to help you recognise the warning signs.

Please ensure your local guidance incorporates the advice for the detection and management of LTB, and raises awareness of the resources.

In partnership with NHS England, we have outlined some lessons learned from recent experience of contract dispute resolution across the country, which includes 10 helpful hints for avoiding conflict.

Evidence shows staying in hospital longer than needed can cause poor outcomes for patients. We have developed five digital guides in partnership with NHS England and The Queen’s Nursing Institute to support you to reduce the length of stay for inpatients when they are clinically fit to leave hospital.

Effective MP engagement is important for all NHS providers. Working on these relationships can change your MPs from vocal critics to critical friends, or even strong allies.

To coincide with this year’s UK Parliament Week, we have produced a guide to MP engagement which has been shared with your communications teams (and is available to them on Comms Link) to support you with your MP engagement.

Our Veterans Covenant Hospital Alliance initiative has now accredited 25 NHS trusts across England, Scotland and Wales as ‘Veteran Aware’.

This mark of distinction means frontline staff have received training and education on the specific needs of veterans and can signpost them to local support services. To continue driving improvements in care for veterans, we’re hoping to have 50 Veteran Aware trusts by the end of 2019.

The online NEWS2 training platform has recently been updated to include refreshed modules and access to the latest downloadable score cards and observation charts. The training remains free to NHS staff, with a new option for NHS organisations to embed the training in their own learning management systems.

NICE quality standards set out priorities for service improvement and NICE is now recruiting for health and care experts to join the committee that develops them. Recruitment closes on Monday 10 December.

The Green Book is guidance issued by HM Treasury on how to appraise policies, programmes and projects. It also provides guidance on the use of monitoring and evaluation techniques before, during and after implementation of projects and programmes.

HM Treasury also publishes supplementary guidance to the Green Book, including two documents updated in October 2018: A Guide to Developing the Project Business Case and A Guide to Developing a Programme Business Case. This guidance helps to deliver better business cases and outcomes with a practical step-by step-guide to the development of business cases.

• Provider bulletin: 7 November 2018