Well said both Adrians! (pl. Adriana?)
I really don't like Mondays - on this day in Warwick we see a major peak of
acute medical patients (both presenting direct from GPs and "overspill" of
GP referred patients who cannot be accommodated on the MAU because MAU can't
be emptied because of the pressure on ward beds from elective admissions for
surgery, blah, blah.)
Add to this the deluge of 3-4 day old minor injuries which have been
tolerated over the weekend but require to be "checked" on a Monday
(coincidentally when it's time to go back to school/work) and we run into
physical capacity problems.
Last Monday (8 days ago) I witnessed a mother of an 11 year old with a
bruised finger of 4 days standing berating a nurse because when she was
triaged she was told the wait was 2 hours. She actually waited 2 hours 45
minutes and therefore felt she was justified in shouting at a nurse. When I
explained that every nurse and doctor in the department was working on the
shop floor and that most of them had either missed or restricted their
breaks she was not interested and tried to have a go at me.
Are we witnessing the death throes of the system here?
Is the Phoenix currently in vogue going to cope or is the underlying social
malaise referred to by AF below going to be insurmountable for as long as
the country provides healthcare free at the point of delivery?
Inserts tongue in cheek
Perhaps the country needs a war to stiffen the backbone.
Removes tongue.
Having said all of the above Monday this week was astonishingly q***t. Still
had the usual medical overspill problem, but hardly any of the usual "just
get it checked out" brigade.
Just goes to show.
Jeremy Harrison
Warwick
> > Has the threshold for attendance at A&E lowered over the
> last few years?
>
> Most definitely, the threshold for attendance has dropped;
> the public can't
> seem to take responsibility for their own well-being anymore.
> The GPs are
> less available than ever; they were smart when it came to
> organising their
> workload. Our SHOs are less experienced; they no longer do
> any real work as
> house officers. Meanwhile most doctors and nurses are getting more
> defensive; they spend a disproportionate amount of resources
> needlessly
> investigating patients, and far too much time writing notes
> (which rarely
> helps the actual patient). All of these ingredients have led to a long
> "winter" of discontent in our specialty...it will take a long
> time to turn
> things round.
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