The BritMeds 2007 (2)

Dr Crippen has been sent lots of serious stuff for today’s Britmeds so, first of all, let’s relax and start on a light note.

How much is a human life worth? A British human life. New Labour has decided. Really. They have put a precise financial value on a human life. And having done that, they now purport to know how to ration health care. It goes from bad to worse.

An experienced hospital doctor describes how and why medical care is falling apart in hospitals. This is what it is like on the front line. This is what happens when you dumb down. Imagine BA trying to fly a plane on this basis:

Student nurses are taught not to trust doctors. Medical students are taught to respect nurses and other allied healthcare professionals. However hard doctors try, they are accused of 'failing to communicate', as if making that accusation somehow mitigates the fact that the patients' care frequently is without direction. Multidisclipinary madness.

But you will not convince the nurse-specialists of this; they still churn out their vacuous botty-wipe when they would be better occupied wiping bottoms. In the meantime, medical SHOs are deskilling on the dole because this is cheaper.

Dr Crippen had not realised just how disgustingly dirty the Scots are. So hand-washing co-ordinators are being employed to teach them what to do after they have been for a poo. Good to know tax-payers money is being spent so wisely.

Dr Rant has a memo to “the dishonest, lying, evil scum running our country". Of whom can he be thinking?

Many NHS employees are fighting the government health care cuts. So is the government. At least 13 members of Tony Blair's ministerial team have campaigned over the last few months against closure of services at NHS hospitals used by their constituents, a Guardian survey has revealed.

Patsy is tired

No wonder Patsy is tired. And can someone remind Dr Crippen what "ministerial responsibility" means?

Special health care for Muslims? Why not indeed. Why not for all religious groups? The delicious Kate Smurthwaite argues that atheists should have the highest priority for health care as they are the only ones not expecting life after death. Take a look at the wonderful Cruella-Blog.

Sniper in the Health Service sustains a needle-stick injury from a patient who is both HIV and Hep B positive. Find out what happened here.

And now to the greatest find of the week. It comes in three parts:

(1) How would you advise this young doctor:

Dear Sir,

I applied to do my F2 year at Plymouth, in Urology, Orthopaedics, and General Surgery, for 4 months each. Two days before starting my job, I was told that I would now work in Care of the Elderly at St Jude’s Residential Home for the Elderly for 6 months, and then I would work for 6 months in Acupuncture at Shoryuken’s Herbal Shop. Please help me as this could end my dream of a surgical career!


Yours,
Dr Mavis Redford
F1 doctor in Ulan Bator, North West Thames Foundation School

Answers here.


(2) MMR vaccine now linked to mental retardation:

A new study shows that parents who refuse the MMR vaccination for their children have higher rates of mental retardation than parents of children who have had the jab. Andrew Wackyfield, the renowned author of the first paper showing a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, has now published research in The Scalpel showing that parents who demand single vaccines have an average IQ of 87…..(continued here)

(3) And finally:

"The European Union yesterday released a revised plan to extend the European Working Time Directive, under pressure from France and Spain. The plan recommends that the maximum working time would be reduced from 48 hours per week to 24 hours per week with a compulsory siesta between 1pm and 4pm. Each group of public sector workers will also have to spend 24 hours per week on strike, unless in exceptional circumstances, they can provide Brussels with a strong reason for not doing so.”

You had better read Mangling Medical Careers before Patsy makes the author an offer he cannot refuse. Mangling Medical Careers is a pseudoquango set up by Krishna Chinthapalli.

Thousands die whilst ambulance men eat lunch, says Carry on Doctor.

But that’s the Daily Express position. How much truth is there is it? In the worryingly entitled “The Post that may lose Reynolds his job…” Tom Reynolds at Random Acts of Reality tells it as it is. As it really is. Let us hope his title is wrong.

Rebel with a Cause - In her blog, Nadine Dorries the MP for North Beds, has been fighting her PCT which, would you believe it, is trying to delay terminations.

Homeopathy and Herbalism on the NHS? : Who Receives It and Why?

Too many people drink too much. And whose fault is that? The GPs of course Isn’t it always?

Racial prejudice is alive and well in the teachers’ favourite newspaper, the Guardian. Read this appallingly racially prejudiced report. You may think there is nothing wrong with it. Now read this and see how you feel.

A few days ago, some sceptical doctor, talking about “alternative medicine” said:

It is always the same with the quacks. Magnesium, zinc, wheat and intestinal thrush. How are intelligent people so easily taken in?

The excellent “It’s all in your mind…” explains exactly how.

Where is all the tax payers' money going?

It was reported that Patricia Hewitt and other cabinet ministers use £250-an-hour life coaches to "cope with the pressures of government". Why not indeed? It is only tax-payers money after all.

The UK government’s current approach towards prostitution is putting sex workers at risk reports Petra, a sex and relationship therapist.

UK dentist, David Quelch, who pulled out an elderly woman's teeth without anaesthetic "to teach her a lesson" has been thrown out of the profession. But should the police have been involved?

A patient writes: “I'm feeling REALLY let down by the NHS now. I'm not sure how I'm going to cope.”

This website/blog celebrates the best of the British : Getting a grip on sanitation and germs.

A JABs commentator accuses Gordon Brown of genocide.

Eating sweets can be bad for your knees. You mean teeth, surely? No, says Dr Jest, I mean knees.

Promise not to laugh. A cardiac arrest “between the yoghurts and the cheese” in a well know chain store – is dealt with by the Trauma Queen.

In Frostbite of the Mind, SHP, a juniour hospital doctor working in psychiatry is clinically depressed – and facing exams and MMC

Mistakes and manslaughter : the criminal law moves in not just on the doctors, but on the pharmacist who made a mistake.

Gerry has landed. The health fuehrer parachutes her secret agent into Rotherham hospital.

Dr Crippen is worried about Rita. She is exposing herself again – she lives dangerously, and one day will get herself into trouble.

In the NHS, we are all used to hypocrisy in healthcare, so Ruth Kelly’s behaviour comes as no surprise. I particularly liked the Rhetorically Speaking approach. And Dr Crippen has said his bit in a rather (for him) intemperate fashion. But now, led by the DK with "the lying shitbag from hell", the swearbloggers are moving in. Mind you, the DK seems tame compared to the implausibly named Pigdogfucker and Teabag Tampon.

Administrative life in the NHS seems to involve a lot of navel gazing but the tax-payers ' meter is still running.

At 16, Clover Stroud's idyllic childhood was shattered when a riding accident left her mother severely brain-damaged. Now, 15 years on, funding for her care is being withdrawn. Can that be right?

Nee Naw is supporting the petition to use the 999 service properly.

Richard Smith’s article in the Grauniad prompted this:

GPs make virtually no clinical decisions. Their job is to act as gatekeepers on the medical service and refer patients to a real doctor. There is no reason why this should require an expensively trained professional and as this anecdote shows most of their job can be done by a competent clerical worker.

How much of the joy at seeing the babeling for the first time was to do with knowing the pain was over? Babymother is trying to bond.

“I’m a medical student, get me out of here” meets a nice consultant and now is thinking of staying.

Oh God, more dumbing down of the NHS. ENT services in Cumbria are to be handed over to amateurs. Gerry Robinson would accuse the consultants of being difficult, for they say:

“It appears that care may be delivered by doctors with either no UK training or by a GP who has undergone a few hours training a week over 12 months. Do you understand our frustration that the patient population, which is being sold a relentless ‘choice’ mantra, is in reality having the most fundamental choice – that of consulting with a fully accredited, audited, appraised and reputable NHS consultant surgeon – taken away?”

Don’t get sick in Cumbria.

Another great find. Sir Findo Gask : "Doing for the internet what Captain Smith did for the Titanic." God, he is clever. In less than three hundred words he has solved the problems with British prisons and the NHS. I wonder what he was like before his lobotomy?

Wandsworth PCT has decided to remove medical care from schools. Is that why the rates are so low there?

The dumbing down of the NHS continues. The relationshiop between midwifes, doctors and medical students was never good. Now it is going to get worse:

4.1.6 All midwives have a major role in teaching and mentoring student midwives, and an expected role in teaching and mentoring junior doctors and medical students. It is essential that the midwifery establishment reflects this.

Now where would you find a statement like that? Here of course.



Dr Mustard has a recipe for the NHS.

The gloriously entitled Little blog of Phlegm takes a look at …er…well, phlegm

A British biomed student shows how an American doctor tried to rip off his family by charging for unnecessary medical tests.

Richard Solomon is as appalled by Ruth Kelly and New Labour as the rest of us. He tells Dr Crippen what British healthcare is now really about.

“Two campers in the outback that were approached by a hungry bear. One of the two friends started putting on his sneakers. "What are you doing?" the other asked. "You can't outrun a bear". His friend replied, "I don't need to outrun the bear. All I need to do is out run you!".

This is why Richard started OUR PETITION

There but for the grace of God. Another missed meningitis. It is so easy through the GMC retrospectocsope.

How long is it reasonable to wait for blood test results. On line Storm thinks three weeks is outrageous.

This patient was told that “if you are over six foot tall you can expect to get back ache”. Really? That is news to Dr Crippen.

It has come to our very urgent attention that the General Medical Council (GMC) is currently mobilizing an utterly shameless group of abjectly disillusioned 'Senior Medical Doctors' and 'Prominent Lay Persons' to independently submit 'Lorry Loads' of fraudulent complaints about Top Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson to it - with an ultimate view to getting Sir Liam summarily struck off the UK Medical Register. Should we Abolish the GMC?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. The pain isn’t fibromyalgia, says “Alive and Blogging”

Kale, at the Poverty News Blog, reports that Campaigner Bob Geldof lavished praise on Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown yesterday for their work in tackling world poverty.

"I guess because it is relatively easy to get your head around this as a solvable issue. Dealing with the NHS may not be." Said Dr Sir Bob Geldof.

Sir Bob might be more useful to the NHS than Gerry Robinson.

What future for the NHS? - a conservative viewpoint

And finally, as a doctor, do you sometimes find it difficult to suggest a prostate examination to the patient?


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Any reader wanting to look at a round-up of non-medical blogs should cast a quick eye over Tim Worstall's weekly Britblogs.

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Please send your recommendations for next week’s BritMeds to: thebritmedsATnhsblogdoc.wanadoo.co.uk