----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 5:48
PM
Subject: Re: Proformas
Simon
I think proformas can have a part to play - for
seniors, juniors, and ENPs. Often quick to fill in thus saving a lot of
time, can act as an important aide memoire, a guide to
management and diagnosis, and encourage appropriate investigations (e.g.
Xrays) - Ankle injuries for example.
However, there should not be too many of them. As
implied, there also needs to be some common sense so that the case is not
forced to fit the proforma, and one should not feel constrained by them.
Like a lot of things in life (e.g. red wine, dark chocolate) - when used
in moderation they can be beneficial.
Finally, at a time of suppposed good will and
festive cheer, I suspect I speak for many lurkers on the list when I say that
it would have been gracious of your grammatical detractor to have said sorry
to you.
Happy Christmas!
Mike Dudley
EM Consultant
Airedale
----- Original Message -----
From:
[log in to unmask]
href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">McCormick Simon Dr, Consultant,
A&E
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 8:24
AM
Subject: Re: Proformas
Dear Adrian,
Thanks for feeling the need to pick up upon my grammar/spelling in a
reasonably public forum, this is of course something you have done to others
in the past but usually in a less aggressive and condescending way.
You are quite right, there are problems with this e-mail, which are clearly
visible to me now, but as this was the third time I'd tried to type it
(my e-mail server and spell checker kept crashing) at the end of what
was already a particularly frustrating day, I guess I missed
them. Terribly sorry to have irritated and depressed you but perhaps
cutting a colleague some slack was beyond you yesterday.
Merry Christmas
Simon
I'm sorry, it's been a long time since I had a whinge about grammar,
but the email below has completely lost me. The third sentence finishes
with a clause: "and even if they do follow them." but then ends abruptly
just when I was expecting something to follow! Later, the sixth sentence
finishes with: "something I'm convinced proformas will do" which doesn't
appear to make any sense given the overall context of the post. There are
numerous other minor stylistic issues that bother me but none of these
appear to affect the meaning, so I won't mention them here, apart from the
irritating habit of using the word "loose" when the author clearly means
"lose": a depressing but increasing "trend" over the last few
months.
AF
Folks,
We
are continuing to face the problem of increasingly junior staff trying
to see increasing numbers of patients, whilst their supervision is by
junior or locum middle grades and only a few consultants. This
inevitably leads to errors. We already have guidelines available but you
cannot guarantee staff read them, and even if they do follow them. Audit
just highlights the problem but by then they have moved on to another
job. A suggested solution is the use of proformas but this just makes my
heart sink as it seems a cheap alternative to good (continuing)
education, supervision and experience. Surely we need to encourage free
thinking and understanding of the subtleties of medicine, something I'm
convinced proformas will do. I've seen similar things used before and
juniors either loose sight of the big picture or shoe horn cases that
don't quite fit in to these systems. I can see the short term financial,
time and clinical risk gains but aren't the loss of developing good
clinical skills and that 6th sense inevitable and unwanted? Or am I
being an old fashioned fuddy duddy and worrying about
nothing.
Simon McCormick
Rotherham
