Saturday, March 24, 2007
Labour's NHS plans: not what the doctors ordered!
Do you want to be referred for an operation by Tesco or Sainsbury's? Would you trust Asda to prescribe the medication that is best for you? New Labour is proposing that supermarkets should be able to provide GP services. But private companies' priority is always profit, and they won't agree to provide healthcare unless profits are guaranteed.
To help the profiteers, New Labour are also proposing to restrict the treatments everyone is entitled to on the NHS. That brings us another step closer to the disastrous US system where a whole family can be wiped out financially if one member needs medical treatment that isn't covered by their insurance. The only way New Labour can get away with these proposals is if the enormous support that exists for the NHS is not mobilised to defend it.
Over 10,000 doctors, junior doctors, medical students, friends and family marched through London and Glasgow on 17 March to protest about changes to the training of junior doctors. Marchers chanted "What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now". Many demonstrators were eager to sign a petition to support a national demonstration to defend the health service but pointed out that it wasn't just their jobs they were marching for, but against attacks on the NHS as a whole.
Two thirds of junior doctors admit to having made a mistake at some time and four out of 10 say they have made a mistake in the past six months. For the survey in the journal 'Occupational and Environmental Medicine' , doctors filled in questionnaires and were rated on a standard test. Doctors remembered making the most errors in emergency medicine, when 57 per cent said they had made a mistake at some time. For anaesthetics the figure was 46 per cent and for intensive care 38 per cent. More than a third of all registrars and half of all house officers - the most junior of doctors - recalled making a mistake, and that is only the ones foolish or honest enough to admit mistakes, clearly most doctors do not.
IMO: Maybe the doctors have been too busy complaining "gissajob" too much to worry about their patient's welfare. Patients sometimes say that but many think it safer to keep quiet in case they get the old gone-with-the-wind treatment ("Where's the rest of me?" though a few trips to B.Liar's new, democratic Iraq may make such worries needless).
To help the profiteers, New Labour are also proposing to restrict the treatments everyone is entitled to on the NHS. That brings us another step closer to the disastrous US system where a whole family can be wiped out financially if one member needs medical treatment that isn't covered by their insurance. The only way New Labour can get away with these proposals is if the enormous support that exists for the NHS is not mobilised to defend it.
Over 10,000 doctors, junior doctors, medical students, friends and family marched through London and Glasgow on 17 March to protest about changes to the training of junior doctors. Marchers chanted "What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now". Many demonstrators were eager to sign a petition to support a national demonstration to defend the health service but pointed out that it wasn't just their jobs they were marching for, but against attacks on the NHS as a whole.
Two thirds of junior doctors admit to having made a mistake at some time and four out of 10 say they have made a mistake in the past six months. For the survey in the journal 'Occupational and Environmental Medicine' , doctors filled in questionnaires and were rated on a standard test. Doctors remembered making the most errors in emergency medicine, when 57 per cent said they had made a mistake at some time. For anaesthetics the figure was 46 per cent and for intensive care 38 per cent. More than a third of all registrars and half of all house officers - the most junior of doctors - recalled making a mistake, and that is only the ones foolish or honest enough to admit mistakes, clearly most doctors do not.
IMO: Maybe the doctors have been too busy complaining "gissajob" too much to worry about their patient's welfare. Patients sometimes say that but many think it safer to keep quiet in case they get the old gone-with-the-wind treatment ("Where's the rest of me?" though a few trips to B.Liar's new, democratic Iraq may make such worries needless).
# posted by uv : 7:21 AM
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