Junior Doctors

I like the above; not conclusive of course, but interesting. The corollary? Had an appointment at my GP’s on Monday. They have an open surgery every weekday morning with two of their four doctors taking patients in the order they book in, no appointment necessary. It was absolutely heaving with people queuing out of the door. Even allowing for the ‘we’ve had a weekend without a doctor’ effect it was hard to avoid the conclusion (voiced by a receptionist), that it was so much busier than normal because of the lack of A&E services. So, the problem just gets shoved further down the line?

This letter published today speaks volumes about the NHS…..

SIR – As a volunteer worker at a local hospital, I was interested to observe that during the doctors’ strike there were only one or two people waiting in the A&E department at any one time, which is most unusual – often there is standing room only.

This may indicate that many people are still using A&E as a GP surgery. This should not be the case: the purpose of the department is to deal with serious accidents and life-threatening conditions.

Ann E Baxter
Bristol

It’s not just the medical profession though is it, look what’s been happening to the Military, the Police, the state of the teaching profession etc. Some cut back and turned into bureaucracies solely existing to meet performance metrics! The whole of the country’s infrastructure is falling apart I tell you.

[QUOTE=Beermat;2308917

One of the worst things for doctors must be that, after seven years of study and then another decade of continuing professional exams, patients come in telling them they’re wrong after spending 20 minutes on Google.. [/QUOTE]

I thought that was quite amusing…..because it’s true!!:rolleyes:

Not a massive fan of Frankie Boyle, as he went through that phase of being distasteful for the sake of it, but I did like his essay on Jeremy Hunt, an extract of which reads:

One of the worst things for doctors must be that, after seven years of study and then another decade of continuing professional exams, patients come in telling them they’re wrong after spending 20 minutes on Google. So imagine how doctors must feel about Jeremy Hunt, who hasn’t even had the decency to go on the internet.

Hunt doesn’t understand the need to pay doctors – he’s part of a ruling class that doesn’t understand that the desire to cut someone open and rearrange their internal organs can come from a desire to help others, and not just because of insanity caused by hereditary syphilis.

This is before we get to plans for bursaries to be withdrawn from student nurses, so that we’re now essentially asking them to pay to work. I sympathise a little with Hunt – he was born into military aristocracy, a cousin of the Queen, went to Charterhouse, then Oxford, then into PR: trying to get him to understand the life of an overworked student nurse is like trying to get an Amazonian tree frog to understand the plot of Blade Runner.

We have a fairly low proportion of people who are doctors, don’t plan to invest in training any more, and are too racist to import them. So we’re shuffling around the doctors we do have to the weekend, when not a lot of people are admitted, from the week, when it’s busy. This is part of a conscious strategy to run the service down to a point where privatisation can be sold to the public as a way of improving things.

Naturally, things won’t actually be improved; they’ll be sold to something like Virgin Health. Virgin can’t get the toilets to work on a train from Glasgow to London, so it’s time we encouraged it to branch out into something less challenging like transplant surgery.

My view is they knew what they were getting into when they joined. Most are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. This is from personal experience. So work or ****** off!My wife and I have had procedures put back because of these spotty erks! The threat is to work in Australia.
Shows how much they know all the better qualified doctors are already there1

A reasoned and well argued statement. Poster demonstrates consistently excellent use of evidence throughout. Poster demonstrates strong understanding of issues at hand, and introduces personal experience without allowing this to sway opinion. Poster also demonstrates good communication skills, with clear and consistent use of spelling and grammar, without resorting to colloquialisms or obscenities to present argument.

10/10

I have a big Op on May the 5th, I just hope they dont go on strike that day!! One thing I know is that there is ageism in the NHS when it comes to folks of my age, your right at the bottom of the list.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

One – they are not spotty erks. The title ‘Junior Doctors’ is often misleading. It just means doctors working in a hospital who are not consultants.

Two – they knew what they were getting into when they joined, but the government are now changing the contract from that to something else considerably worse – that is the whole point.

Three – you want them to be further stretched? It is lack of human resource that is killing the NHS, a very deliberate policy of discreditation and one which the less thinking of us fall for hook line and sinker.

Using the trucking analogy – if you wanted to prove that road transport was a bad thing because you are following some political imperative, you make all truckers work longer hours without breaks, so they have more accidents. Job done – the public now see trucking as dangerous, and want it stopped. This is the policy – and yes, it will mean more deaths.

So you don’t want newly qualified or junior staff; you don’t want them to be inexperienced or worn out when working, yet when they try to dispute the implementation of a contract which would stretch those problems further you slag them off rather than the ministerial chump who would delight in expanding the working experience of the junior doctors without exponentially expanding the staff numbers or funding.
Maybe if there was some sort of tacho card issued to junior doctors with the same remit that HGV drivers must follow…

I would not want to get on an airliner with newly qualified aircrew either. A&E is staffed by junior Doctors who basically do not understand complex issues. There is usually one registrar and that is it. Paramedics and senior nursing staff usually know more. That is based on many trips to A&E with my wife and my powers of observation.
One example. My wife collapsed in agony with severe abdominal pain. Ambulace Paramedic said he thought Kidney Stones,Trearge(? spelling) nurse said the same Junior Doctor thought bowel obstruction or appendicitis after poking and prodding. He found a senior Doctor who asked if he had sent her for an xray,nope not thought of that! xray done,yes you guessed it kidney stones!
I could give you more examples and I know they have to learn and become skilled and progress to become future consultants but unsupervised they can be lethal. Still the NHS is short staffed and seems to bimble along in an chaotic manner.

You or I make a mistake,probably not to much harm done. Doctors bury their mistakes.

Bet no one here would want to get on an airliner flown by a crew who had done the same amount of hours. I wonder what the statistics are for patients dying due to a spotty erk cocking it up because he/she was totally sh*gged. I don’t particularly fancy being confronted by a bleary eyed doctor if I’m in A&E with some life threatening condition that requires a clear head to sort out. We don’t ask any other safety critical workers to do those hours.

Maybe they did know what they were getting into when they signed and are keen, but even the keenest person can c*ck it up when over tired. That’s why they put tacho’s in HGVs.

Sadly seeing this in the engineering industry. Right, you all have to do more with less. It’s called being LEAN and it’s the path to riches for the shareholders. Well it is until the lack of resources means anything out of the ordinary causes the whole lot to fall over partly because all the good people have either left or are too sh*gged/disillusioned to be good anymore.

…and another thing, teaching staff……………………

Your life in their hands – their hands being attached to a body that works a minimum of a 48 hour week, and more in A&E.
And they are juniors – they will still be in the learning stage. Learning how to work without sleep, maybe?

The contract is being imposed, without consultation. Maybe you would decide that you know someone else’s job better than they do and are happy to tell them how to do their job without providing the resources to do that job? There were suggestions that the contract be tried out at a few hospitals, but since it was a Labour suggestion you can guess how Hunt responded.

Paul, may I please practice retrophrenology upon your skull? It might help you in the long run…

Corrected apart from a lack of spacing which I can not be bothered to do.
So Snafu let me have you pearls of wisdom on the content, Did you get your frontal lobotomy yet are you still on the list?:)

Re #1

1/10 for the rant, 0/10 for spelling.

Many are intending to ****off as you so charmingly put it. Thanks to the combination of poor management, incompetent government and media attacks. Where will the doctors come from to fill the void?

Before even reading your rant I am delighted to point out that they are doctors, unless you are referring to people who work on the docks, unloading and loading ships, etc…