I’m now officially a flu-fighting super-doc, and hope that all of my clinical colleagues are similarly brilliant!

The evidence is clear: in randomised trials, care facilities with high uptake of flu vaccine amongst staff have been consistently shown to have significantly lower levels of flu-like illness and mortality. In the 2010/11 flu season, the UK saw 2,200 ITU admissions with flu, mostly in under-65s.

So do your bit, and get your jab!

It seems hard to believe that here in the 21st century, I still apply for study leave by posting a carbon-copy quadruplet A3 sized form… It’s almost difficult to believe that the deanery can find a printer that still makes carbon copy forms, let alone that printing thousands of them is a cost-effective way of administering a process. And that’s before the cost of posting them back and forth is included!

As I post this, I note that I missed posting a photo yesterday. Sunday seems to be the day I forget most frequently… I’m not sure why! I’ll post another later to make up the numbers!

Newcastle has a history of pioneering leadership in the field of paediatrics. In fact, one of the UK’s first paediatric hospitals, the Fleming Memorial Hospital for Sick Children, opened here in the 1860s.

By the late 1890s, we had a second paediatric hospital, the Sanderson Children’s Hospital, where some of the first groundbreaking work in paediatric orthopaedics was carried out.

And, in the last century, Sir James Spence – the UK’s first full-time paediatrician – founded the social paediatrics subspecialty, and revolutionised our understanding of child mortality (and much more besides) through the Newcastle Thousand Families Study.

The Great North Children’s Hospital – of which this is a particularly bad photo – is a £100m development opened in 2010. It is but the next step in this illustrious journey. It’s designed to be as un-hospital like as possible, even including a teenage “penthouse” on the top floor, with a pool table, massive flat screen TV, and some of the best views in the city. It also has unrivalled medical facilities, of course, including a genuinely world-leading “bubble unit” for kids with severe immunity problems.

Who knows what the next step will be?

As a public health doctor, I was very pleased to see the Stoptober team out in force when I popped to the supermarket today. I wish anyone taking part every strength and every success!

If you smoke but haven’t yet signed up, there’s still time to get involved: sign up at the Stoptober website.

If you don’t smoke: good for you!

This is a tiny bit of the Royal Society of Medicine’s incredible library, which is one of the biggest medical libraries in Europe. It’s spread over four floors, holding over half a million volumes – with around a thousand new ones added each year. It holds books dating back to the 1400s – when the occasional outbreak of Black Death was still claiming the lives of young Londoners. Even I couldn’t resist pulling a book off the shelf and reading for a while.

I think bringing Wendy here would be dangerous: she’s can easily spend an hour looking at the fairly pitiful selection of medical books in our local Blackwell’s, and has even taken her mum to the BMA library when on holiday! If I brought her here, she might move in… especially if she knew there’s a Mango nearby!

I’ve been again to give blood today (you should too – see blood.co.uk). My local donor centre has just replaced its beds with these reclining chairs… I have to say that I found the process of being reclined a little unnerving!

This pair of signs features in the car park of one of my local hospitals. It’s hardly the end of the world that two nearby signs contradict one another, but I would’ve liked to think, even if only for the sake of neatness, that the person putting up the new sign on the left would have obscured or removed the old sign on the right.

I wonder, too, whether the new sign is more effective: how many people would bother to read the small print, and how many would miss the main message given the reduced font size?

It’s Annual Review of Competence Progression (ARCP) time for most medical trainees at this time of year. This is where a panel reviews how we’re doing, and how our training is progressing. Most trainees these days have e-portfolios to collect evidence for these annual reviews, but in Public Health in the Northern Deanery, we still use paper… which requires literally hundreds of physical signatures from supervisors, and other numbers from other people, which can make co-ordination something of a challenge!

This picture shows my portfolio carefully balanced on top of my car, as I prepared to hand it in to the Deanery’s office. I’m glad to finally have it finished for another year!

This is the MediCinema in Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary. I’ve never had the opportunity to venture inside – my job took me to a different hospital before it opened – but I understand that it’s a full scale 56-seat cinema with Dolby Surround Sound and all mod-cons.

Opened in 2009, it was the first purpose-built cinema within a UK hospital, and gives patients – particularly those in hospital for a long time – the chance to do something a little different to break up the monotony of hospital life. It even has space for people to attend in their beds!

The building of the cinema was supported by a number of local and national companies (from Fenwick to Disney!), and it’s maintained and run in association with the national MediCinema charity. I think it’s a really interesting example of a hospital doing something a little different!

This is the badge I got a few weeks ago for my 25th blood donation. I couldn’t think of anything else to picture today, so thought I’d go for another exhortation to give blood. Check where your next local session is at blood.co.uk or call 0300 123 23 23. Thanks!