You will all have seen reports in the media about the report showing the increased mortality in patients admitted to hospital at the weekends. One of the factors is said to be a lack of Consultant presence in the hospital at weekends. Well who would have thought? Many of the commenters to the news articles place the blame for this at the feet of the Consultants themselves. It is of course that we are all spending time at the golf course or the private hospital when we should be in the NHS hospital. The thought that we may simply be off duty doesn’t occur to these twats.
From the inside it is obvious that the reason the consultants are not in the hospital at the weekend is because of the increasing trend for trusts to have medical care provided not by doctors but by the chiropodist’s assistant’s mate’s aunt, because it is cheaper.
Surely this is not about pretend doctors, as you call them, but rather lack of seniority, and indeed number of medics at certain times?
ReplyDeleteIn my experience the medical registrar is the workhorse doctor out of hours while specialty colleagues always seem to be looking after 'a very sick patient' somewhere and never seem very keen to help out.
From your link (1), and off topic, your rant against pharmacists struck a chord today - today I had to attach a fucking review article to my prescription so I could give a widely used, inexpensive drug with a long history (and reasonable evidence base) to an inpatient because it 'isn't licensed for that'.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why (a) they should even care whether it is licensed, that's my concern, and (b) why the fuck I, the bloody doctor, needs to justify to them, the sodding pill dispenser, why I have chosen the treatment that I have! Worst of all the patient is palliative so will probably die before I get anything approved by the pharmacy uber-fuhrer.
pj, I had a similar experience in the community recently with the Boots rent-a-pharmacist refusing to give an established treatment as "it wasn't licenced". I told them this was pretty rich coming from someone who was selling the patients HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES!!!! and asked to give the script back to the patient and request they go and see a proper pharmacist - which they did .. Grrrr...
ReplyDeleteI recently came across a hospital manager who thought that if a drug was not licensed for a particular indication, that equated to a contraindication.
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