The Department of Health has launched a “vision and strategy” to support and develop the contribution of all nurses to the care of dementia patients.

The strategy, published as the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge reached its first anniversary, describes what is expected of general, “dementia skilled” and specialist nurses working across all care settings.

Significantly for industry, the strategy requires nurses to be “research aware and committed to delivering evidence-based care”.

Listing the values and behaviours necessary for nurses involved in dementia treatment and care, the strategy includes:

• recognising that dementia “brings cognitive, behavioural and physical changes”

• supporting advance care planning

• promoting patient choice and focusing on “strengths and unmet need”

• using “all available resources including networking, technology and social media to improve care and access to services”.

A pyramid of nursing care is outlined, with all nurses providing “usual care and support”, dementia skilled nurses providing “assisted care or care management”, and dementia specialist nurses providing “intensive or case management”.

Emphasis is placed on the need for “seamless” integrated care across a range of settings: home, community and hospital.

The strategy addresses the responsibilities of nurses not only in the NHS but also in social care, the prison service and the private and voluntary sectors.

Pauline Watts, DH Nurse Lead for Dementia Care, commented on the launch of the strategy: “Dementia is every nurse’s business – with a change in mindset, practice, commissioning and education, nurses can make a real difference to people living with dementia and their carers and families.”

The appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary has provoked a storm of controversy regarding his views on healthcare and the NHS.

Critics have noted his co-authorship of a 2005 book calling the NHS “no longer relevant” to the health needs of a modern society.

More recently, it was reported that he opposed the inclusion of a tribute to the NHS in the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.

Hunt’s belief in the importance of homeopathic medicines has also been criticised as showing a poor understanding of scientific evidence.

Direct Democracy (2005) was co-authored by 23 Conservative Party members, including Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and MEP Daniel Hannon (who later called the NHS “a 60-year mistake”).

A chapter on health stated that the existing NHS structure was “no longer relevant” and that its problem was not “one of resources” but one of being a state-run and centrally organised healthcare provider.

“We should fund patients, either through the tax system or by way of universal insurance, to purchase health care from the provider of their choice,” the book argued. “Those without means should have their contributions supplemented or paid for by the state.”

Hunt’s opposition to the NHS tribute in the Olympic Games opening ceremony was reported in July. According to the Times Hunt queried whether the tribute was “necessary”, but the Prime Minister overrode his objection.

Medical scientists have suggested that Hunt’s endorsement of homeopathy – he signed a Commons early day motion supporting it in 2007 – betrays a poor grasp of evidence-based medicine.

Professor Sir John Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, said: “It would be a real blow for those who want medicine to be science-based if the Secretary of State were to promote homeopathy because of his personal beliefs.”

There is widespread under-reporting of clinical trial data by pharmaceutical companies, according to the British Medical Journal.

An editorial in the journal claimed that incomplete reporting is “a threat to the integrity of evidence-based medicine”, and called for the establishment of a global database for all raw clinical trial data.

However, the journal did not claim there was any systematic bias or intention to mislead in clinical trial reports.

“Missing data about harm in trials can harm patients, and incomplete data about benefit can lead to futile costs to health systems,” commented authors Richard Lehman and Elizabeth Loder.

In 2007, the FDA Amendments Act made the publication of summary clinical trial results on an online registry mandatory within a year of completing the trial. However, a study reported in the BMJ found that more than half of the trials uploaded to the registry are incomplete after 30 months.

Another BMJ study examined the impact that unpublished data would have had on 41 meta-analyses of nine drugs approved by the FDA in 2001 and 2002. It found that in 38 of these, the missing data would have affected the conclusions.

However, in half of these cases the evidence for the drug’s efficacy was weakened by the addition of the missing data, while in the other half it was strengthened – so no systematic bias was identified.