1. LEEDS - 16 Consultants. Correct me if I am wrong, but this is to cover
2 Departments - LGI & St.James's
2. Sure, I think all of us can see the potential benefits of more senior
shopfloor direct involvement 24hrs a day. Providing it, is not so easy.
SpRs have less time for service commitment; Staff Grades? - are departments
still able to find quality applicants? I just don't think there are many
left out there any more. So that leaves Consultants - and not enough of
them, or do we face enforced Departmental mergers (Ugh!). I take my hat off
to those Consultants who already do a lot of w/e & evening shifts. I am
lucky, I have an excellent Consultant colleague who prefers to work
evenings, but before I go more down that road I would like to see, e.g.
Consultant Physicians doing similar supporting their junior staff. There's
not much point if patients are excellently worked up only to be passed on to
a junior medic.
At the end of the day, as someone once said "Nobody's dying words were "I
wish I'd spent more time at the office"".
Mike Dudley
Airedale
----- Original Message -----
From: Adrian Fogarty <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 12:36 AM
Subject: Re: Consultants for ATLS at night
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Laurence Rocke"
>
> > Listen, people, all this talk worries me greatly. Why should we settle
> for
> > different conditions than other consultants who do not come in unless a
> reg
> > asks them to do so.
> > The alternative is for us to agree to be resident for extended periods,
> with
> > APPROPRIATE levels of staffing. In Leeds, they have agreed with the
Trust
> > in principle to be there 9am to 9pm every day if there are EIGHT
> > consultants. For 24/7 cover there would be SIXTEEN consultants. We all
> > have a life outside medicine - well, most of us do. Lets cut out the
crap
> > and demand fair treatment.
>
> I'd love to know how Leeds arrived at their figures Rocky. Sixteen
> consultants is the sort of numbers you see in American or Australian units
> i.e. where every patient is signed off by an "attending". For consultant
> "presence" I don't believe you need these sorts of numbers. If you accept
> that you only need 3 or 4 consultants by day (clinical, management and
> teaching etc), one guy to do the night (followed by days off), then I
figure
> you could run 24/7 cover with 8-10 consultants at most (someone could do
the
> maths for me?). Remember we don't all need to be in from 9-5 like the
> obstetricians, paediatricians and anaesthetists. I realise I may be
talking
> our specialty out of 16 consultant departments but if we ask for such
> numbers we'll be ignored by government! Realistically however we can
slowly
> work towards 8 consultant departments, and personally I don't relish the
> thought of signing off every patient like the Americans do, though no
doubt
> it'll happen someday! I expect BAEM are doing work on these numbers as we
> speak?
>
> Regards
>
> Adrian Fogarty
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