College and BAEM are putting together a response to the authors of this document pointing out how important proper consultation is as well as the need for proper trained staff and monitoring standards etc, I beleive there will be a statement position in the near future. Any other (constructive) comments would be welcomed by either Jim Wardrope or Martin Shalley via the college or BAEM office or email [log in to unmask]
thanks ruth
-----Original Message-----
From: Accident and Emergency Academic List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Rowley Cottingham
Sent: 24 April 2006 09:18
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The destruction of Emergency Medicine?
This worries me. A report in this week's Hospital Doctor (a free UK
magazine sent to hospital doctors) starts, "A new report from the
National Leadership Network (no, I hadn't heard of them before either),
an influential group of managers and clinicians advising the DoH, says
it is up to service providers to prevent A&E services being destabilised
as elective care is hived off to the private sector."
They want far more delivered in the community, and say that an A&E
department must have acute medicine, critical care, non-interventional
coronary care, and supporting services. All other services, such as
emergency surgery, trauma, orthopaedics, paediatrics, O&G, etc, could be
provided by clinical networks of services provided across a number of
hospitals.
Apparently 100 A&E departments could be closed. Martin Shalley says that
BAEM has been sidelined and has not been involved in the debate. Another
A&E Consultant, Mark Sedgwick, suggests that we could have something
between the European system (presumably the polyclinic model) and the US
system; funded by insurance, do away with A&E departments as we know
them and have a triage system to send seriously ill patients to the
relevant speciality.
It's worth reading.
http://www.nationalleadershipnetwork.org/public/NLN-StrengtheningLocalServ
icesMain-170306.pdf
This is a shorter link: http://tinyurl.com/ozw8x
Now I know a lot of our colleagues have seen change, but I don't think
anyone else has heard a suggestion that their job, training and career
structure is about to be dismantled! Do we have a view on this?
/Rowley./
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