Saturday - July 14, 2012

Free Health Care

Posted by Christopher     on 07/14/2012 at 07:18 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Health-Medicine • Obama, The One •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Monday - July 09, 2012

today’s major headline: hospitals letting patients die to save money

This headline greeted me first thing this morning, and I though it would be in keeping with my previous hilarious post on health care to share it.
Til today I wasn’t even aware of this pathway thing written about here.  Does raise a question though. Maybe more then one.

If you’re terminal anyway, and if sick enough and body ravaged by disease and pain, would you still want to hang on?
Some of our readership is young and by young I mean perhaps up to 60 because even at that age, generally you aren’t as aware of your impending end as say, I am at 75.  Since I’ve been here, I have witnessed things happening to people I knew. Past tense cos sadly some are gone. And for some, not a pleasant end at all.  None of which I gave any thought to when in my 20’s or 30’s. Even after that it didn’t impinge on my thoughts or life and death planning. But once past 70 and reading obits of less fortunate ppl going at an earlier age, it just gives pause for thought. And I had as some of you may recall, lot of cause for pause with the loss of a younger brother. Younger by 6 years of a disease that by all rights should have taken me first.  We were both smokers. So his death at 46 was an emotional disaster and I miss him every day.

So then ... I guess the question is as stated above.  Why would anyone want to live attached to tubes and such?  Not for me I don’t think.
How about those who are not terminal yet, but see the direction they are headed. But I guess that’s another subject and one I’m working on for a future post. 

Hospitals ‘letting patients die to save money’

Hospitals may be depriving elderly patients of food and drink to hasten their deaths as part of cost-cutting measures to free up bed space, leading doctors warn.

By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses are placed on a “death pathway” to help end their lives every year. However, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, six doctors warn that hospitals may be using the controversial scheme to reduce strain on hospital resources.

Supporters of the Liverpool Care Pathway, which allows medical staff to withhold fluid and drugs in a patient’s final days, claim it is the kindest way of letting them slip away. But the experts say in their letter that natural deaths are often freer of pain and distress.

Informed consent is not always being sought by doctors, who fail to ask patients about their wishes while they are still in control of their faculties, warn the six. This has led to an increase in patients carrying cards informing doctors that they do not wish to be put on the pathway in the last few days of their lives.

The six doctors are experts in elderly care and wrote the letter in conjunction with the Medical Ethics Alliance, a Christian medical organisation. They say that many members of the public have contacted them with examples of inappropriate use of the pathway, which is implemented in up to 29 per cent of hospital deaths.

They warn that there is no “scientific way of diagnosing imminent death.” They write: “It is essentially a prediction, and it is possible that other considerations may come into reaching such a decision, not excluding the availability of resources.”

The Liverpool Care Pathway, so called because it was developed at the Royal Liverpool Hospital in the 1990s, aims to ensure that patients who are close to death can die without being subjected to unnecessary interference by staff. In addition to the withdrawal of fluid and medication, patients can be placed on sedation until they die.

Dr Gillian Craig, a retired geriatrician and former vice-chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, is one of the six signatories to The Daily Telegraph letter.

MORE TO READ HERE

Posted by peiper     on 07/09/2012 at 04:17 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • UK •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Sunday - July 08, 2012

some scary articles to start your week with. how are things where you are?

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN?

Or at least, the medical world.
What is happening?  I was going to ignore one or two but stuff like this keeps cropping up.  Now then, either this kind of thing is a regular occurrence in the USA as well, or they do a better job of covering it up.  Because I never read as many nor did we even hear as many nightmare medical stories back home in the US, as have been broadcast here.  And it is scary.  Maybe they are just more open here?  I don’t pretend to know.

Some people may want to blame national health. But I think it’s more then that.  Somehow for some reason, too many of the wrong sort of people are given jobs they just plain do not belong in. There have even been foreign doctors working here who had a problem with English and as a result, patients have actually died.

They may be able to pass a test, and as an example, I’ll use myself and the majority of my classmates who attended a Radio Operational Engineering School, in Newport Beach, Ca., circa 1969.

When I was younger and knowing a bit about some of the then requirements to work in radio, I attended a radio engineering school in Calif.  We were taught how to pass the FCC test(s) that were mandatory at that time.  From early morning to late in the evening every day.  We actually were taught the basics of how Xmitters worked and read schematics etc.  It was all of it very technical.  But we were being prepared to take a series of tests, not become actual engineers.  Back then, you HAD to have an FCC radio operator’s license to do no more then read the meters every hour on the transmitter and then log them.  There were 3rd , 2nd and 1st class licenses.  You stood a better chance of being hired (if you could even find openings) if you had what we called a First Phone, then a 2nd and at the bottom, a 3rd.  And all to read a meter.

You obviously couldn’t take a test for the First Phone till you’d passed the tests for the other two.  A lot of late nights and a lot of work and hundreds and hundreds of Q&A tests at school taking dummy FCC tests to prepare.  The questions numbered in the hundreds although the test you actually took might only have say 50 questions. But don’t let that fool you.  Among those 50 were questions that required you work out the mathematics involved. And the FCC wanted your work sheets where you worked out those math problems.  So in the end, when taking the tests, everything the FCC asked had been covered over the course of the months and months you were at school.  And btw, the majority of us lived right there in dormitories. The discipline was quite military.  And all to do no more then read a meter or two every hour.

Funny thing about that last item.  Once you got to actual work, you were not always as well prepared to read those meters as you thought you’d be, because often they didn’t appear to be like the ones in your illustrations etc.  Or the digits in place of numbers might have been hard to read.  So you simply copied the readings of the guy who was on before you and chances were he had done the same. Sometimes you might alter one number to make some things look okay.  But if a Transmitter failed or something happened, I was no more qualified to go in and repair that huge thing then I was to fly a jet plane.

That’s what chief engineers were for and every station had to have one.  As long as we knew what parameters were safe to run on, and we did, all worked out well.

So what I’m suggesting is, maybe some of these folks working in these hospitals, went to schools that prepared them to take and pass all the correct tests, but are still not qualified.  How else pray tell can we account for these horror stories?  They are far too serious to be referred to simply as, mishaps.  This is very serious indeed.  More serious because I’ve listed just three here.  But there is so much more.
Take a look.

Patient dying of thirst rang 999: Inquest hears of mother’s fury at nurses who neglected son
· Nurses forgot to give Kane Gorny his medication and he became so delirious he called 999
· His mother said she spent hours trying to convince staff he needed attention but was told he was alright
· Alarm finally raised an hour before his death when a doctor realised how serious his condition was
By CLAIRE ELLICOTT

A young patient who died of dehydration at a leading teaching hospital phoned police from his bed because he was so thirsty, an inquest heard yesterday

PATIENT DIES OF THIRST

-30-

Hospital staff suspended after man dies on doorstep of A&E
Eleven medical staff have been suspended and an investigation launched after a patient collapsed and died on the doorstep of a hospital.

The man had been admitted to the Accident and Emergency unit of the Manor Hospital in Walsall, West Midlands, when the incident occurred.
It is thought that despite his condition he was allowed to go outside for some fresh air but collapsed shortly afterwards.
As he lay on the ground just yards from the hospital entrance it is alleged that medical staff, including nurses, porters and paramedics ignored his plight.
It is also claimed that members of the public stepped over the man as they entered the hospital, with some even stopping to take photographs and video footage on their mobile phones.
An unnamed eyewitness said he was horrified by what he had seen.

DIES ON DOORSTEP

-30-

My 17 hours of hell at hospital where a patient died of thirst: Left unattended in agony, one writer’s account of her ordeal at an NHS ‘centre of excellence’

By MELISSA KITE
Lying in an ambulance, drifting in and out of consciousness, I managed to ask the paramedics where they were taking me. ‘St George’s Hospital in Tooting,’ came the reply.
If I could have jumped out and made a run for it, I would have. I was in desperate need, but I think I would rather have put up with an ambulance ride to the other side of the country.
However, St George’s - where 22-year-old Kane Gorny died of dehydration - has been my local hospital for ten years. In an emergency, I was always going to be taken there.
I had no idea then that a patient had died from thirst. My fear of the place was born from my own bitter experiences.

17 HOURS OF HELL

-30-

I sure hope things are better where you are.

Posted by peiper     on 07/08/2012 at 02:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Health and Safety • Health-Medicine • UK •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - July 04, 2012

False Alarm

I saw a billboard by the side of the road the other day. I didn’t have too much time to read it, since my concentration was more on the road and all the traffic cones as one of our local cowpaths undergoes widening to officially become the minor highway that it’s turned into over the years. Some routes are just too convenient, and eventually they just get overwhelmed with traffic. And several eternities after that the government cottons to that reality and sends out the asphalt gang.

So anyway, I’m coming south from Washington into Glen Gardner, and I catch a glance at a billboard ... End Polio Now it tells me. Say what?? That billboard has been used for health messages in the past for years - deer ticks, well water inspection, folic acid for prenatal care, etc - so I was shocked. Polio? “Holy ****”, I’m thinking as I motor past Sanatorium Rd, the street where one of the largest tuberculosis recovery facilities in state history once existed, “now polio is making a comeback? The world’s gone mad! It’s gotta be all those unchecked illegals with their diseases sneaking in!”

A bit more research shows that India has just had it’s first full year EVER without a polio case. Ever. While the Salk and the Sabin vaccines virtually eliminated polio in the USA in the late 50s and early 60s, followed by a massive world-wide immunization program that protected most of the world within the next decade, some of the farthest and poorest corners are still at risk. India was one of them, but efforts over the last 10 years or so by the WHO and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have inoculated tens of millions of children there.

Incidents of polio from the wild disease only exist in 3 countries at this point. Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Three of the poorest corners of the globe, and all three with heavy radical Islam influence.

In Afghanistan I read that the Taliban is actively fighting the vaccination teams, even killing them. And my reaction to that was typical too: filthy murderous primitives, using children as a political lever, probably chopping off arms once the doctors visit villages, just like Pol Pot and those African shamans. And while I may be somewhat right with that view, I may also be somewhat wrong. The Taliban may be somewhat justified in their actions.

You see, there are three kinds of polio virus: type 1, type 2, and type 3. And there are two kinds of polio vaccine: injected (Salk, IPV) and oral (Sabin, OPV). And the vaccines now come in three varieties, which I think relate to the strains of the virus they contain: monovalent, bivalent, and trivalent. And the vaccines almost always work. Almost. But not always. The Salk vaccine, known as IPV (Injected Polio Vaccine) only contains the dead virus. It needs to be administered by a health worker qualified to give injections, and thus costs upwards of a dollar per dose. The Sabin vaccine, known as OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine) contains dead and “neutralized” virus, and can be administered by anyone. This drops the cost to about a dime. Recent studies have shown that the bivalent form of the vaccine might be more efficacious than the mono- or trivalent versions, but that probably won’t lower the cost noticeably. The cost numbers I’m throwing around are inexact, but close. And it actually requires 2 or 3 inoculations to fully protect a child, so the real cost per child is tripled.

All polio vaccination in the USA is done with the IPV these days. The risk from that form of the vaccine is far lower than the risk from the oral form.

The point is that even Bill Gates can only afford to immunize the entire world with the oral vaccine, and that vaccine isn’t perfect. Some children get polio from receiving the vaccine. Some die. The numbers are quite low - the risk is something like 1 in 10,000 - but the risk is still there. And it may be (I’m just tossing this idea out there) that weaker, more malnourished children have a higher incidence of getting infected from the immunization. And that’s likely what the Taliban is objecting to. Don’t ask me what goes on in Nigeria. Probably witch doctors and evil spirits for all I know. There are also other voices - naysayers, Luddites, the tinfoil hat brigade, and perhaps some with well thought out objections - who feel that the whole OPV effort is hardly more than a tax dodge and a way to support Big Pharma by emptying their warehouses of unwanted and outdated medicines. Oh, its also the root of the great cancer epidemic we’ve had since then, and that was likely known at the time the vaccines hit the market. That’s a bit too cynical, even for me.

I invite any of the MDs we have here as members to comment professionally, and I welcome enlightening comments by members who have personal knowledge or who have made more research effort than I. I may be misstating things here, and I welcome correction and enlightenment. Our more mature readers will remember the polio outbreaks of the 40s and 50s. The summers of fear. The horror and the heartbreak. I turn 52 on Veteran’s Day, and polio has hardly been part of my life. By the time I was old enough to be aware of such things, the pandemic was pretty much over in America. I’d see the rare child with legs braces or crutches, we all collected our pennies for UNICEF at Halloween, and you’d hear adults talk about how things used to be. And that was it. By the time I was in high school even those conversations were a thing of the past. But the virus is not dead. Polio still exists “in the wild”. Which means there’s probably some in your house, or in your yard, or even on your skin right now. I’ll leave you with one statistic I ran across while looking things up for this post: 95% of American children are fully immunized against polio before they enter the public school system. If I had young children, I would not want them to be part of that 5%. Would you??

The lady on the billboard above is Megan Jones-Holt, resident of my town and District Governor of Rotary here in NJ.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/04/2012 at 09:46 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Thursday - June 28, 2012

Watching and Waiting: ObamaCare Upheld

The SCOTUS decision on ObamaCare is due out within minutes.

I’m watching the TV just as close as I did when Eagle first descended to the lunar surface.

I’m rather upset by the whole thing ... and what really upsets me is that I have NO FAITH that the Supreme Court of the United States is going to rule this horrible thing unconstitutional. No faith at all.

UPDATE: IT’S A TAX? THEREFORE IT’S LEGAL? INDIVIDUAL MANDATE UPHELD??? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK???

Oh whoopty fucking do, the punitive measures are unconstitutional. So the cocksucking cowards of the Supreme Court made their decision as “a little of this, a little of that” instead of standing up for what America is all about. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think my nation just died.

“Congress’s ability to tax and spend is unlimited.” Boy howdy, they got that one right.

This is a very confusing decision. How in God’s name can they accept this as a tax, when our Glorious President told us over and over and over and over - several times a day for 18 mother fucking months - that this was NOT a tax?

Scalia/Kennedy/Thomas/Alito dissent calls decision “a vast judicial overreaching.” Yeah, no shit. I think the camel’s back is broken.

Update: One small ray of hope? One weak, guttering candle stub barely holding a flame in a hurricane? Ann Althouse post, stolen in it’s entirety (sorry Ann, but I had to.)

Obama imposes huge tax on the American middle class.
That’s the story, right? That’s the spin for Romney. What’s the spin for Obama?

UPDATE: Drudge points to Obama’s assertion, back in September 2009 that the mandate is not a tax.

STEPHANOPOULOS: [I]t’s still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I’m not covering all the costs.

I have said repeatedly that Obama would be worse off if Obamacare were upheld, but what I’m really seeing is how bad it is for him with the mandate declared a tax.

Remember the Democrats got the statute passed by insisting it was not a tax. Now, we learn it is only constitutional because it is a tax. That’s got to hurt politically.

ADDED: Romney has at least 3 big arguments:

1. Obama imposed a huge new tax on working people.

2. Obama deceived the American people by saying it was not a tax, when it was.

3. The law made it look like money would go to insurance companies — in the form of new premiums — that would keep premiums low as the companies were required to take on people with pre-existing conditions, but now we find out that the money is really going to go to the federal government. [ADDED: So get ready for your premiums to spiral up and/or for insurance companies to be ruined.]

I am out of my mind depressed right now. I want to start a revolution and burn and kill. I can’t discuss this, I can’t debate this. For my own sanity, right now I can’t even think about this. I have to walk away for a bit. So let me give you John Goodman’s character Walter Sobchak’s quote from The Big Lebowski:

Ah, fuck it Dude. Let’s go bowling.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/28/2012 at 09:12 AM   
Filed Under: • Government • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (27) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - June 27, 2012

new age nursing? not my job says nurse while patient on the floor.

Why after three years is this now coming to light? Papers don’t say. They just run with the story. 
This might be an odd one off event but sadly, it isn’t.  I just don’t post all the horror stories I read.

My two encounters with hospitals here, were happily non events. The staff couldn’t have been more caring or professional. But that could be our location. I don’t know.  What I do know is that there are so darn many stories like this one, even more then travellers and gypsy stories, that after awhile you just either skip or are aware only as something you see out of the corner of your mind’s eye.
I once saw something like this in an American hospital btw.

When I first saw this article under news briefs in the Telegraph hard copy, I Googled the headline and came up with a slightly different story altogether.
Not that the person described here comes out pure as driven snow. Far from it.

Truro nurse accused of leaving patient lying on the floor

Source: This is Cornwall
Western Morning News

A nurse left a patient lying on a hospital ward floor for 40 minutes and said she was not paid to look after people like him, a hearing was told.

Gugu Shabalala refused to help a colleague move the man into a more comfortable position or review his condition, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

Shabalala was working at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro at the time of the incident in January 2009.

Angela Barron, a health care assistant who worked alongside Shabalala on the shift in question, said she had walked into the patient’s bay to find him in a “very strange position”.

“He was kneeling between the bed and chair with his head resting on the chair,” she said. “I asked him if he wanted to go back to bed, but he did not answer. I tried to help him up into bed but could not move him at all.”

Realising it was a job for two, she went to find Shabalala, who was the nurse in charge for that part of the ward.

When they returned, she saw him roll himself on to the floor and curl up, the panel heard.

Unable to move the man, referred to only as patient B, Mrs Barron said Shabalala then asked her to fetch a blanket to cover him and a pillow for his head.

She added: “He was lying on the floor without any bedding or mattress.

“While he was lying there, Ms Shabalala’s only comment was ‘he obviously wants to be on the floor’.

“I’m not sure how long he remained on the floor, but at about 12pm I went back in to find him back in bed.”

She said she could not recall the exact time of the alleged incident, only that it definitely took place after 9.30am.

Shabalala is not attending the proceedings and is not represented.

She has made no formal admissions to any of the charges, although sent a letter to the NMC in which she claims she was not responsible for patient B on January 29.

But Mrs Barron said as far as she was concerned, Shabalala was the nurse in charge.

Shabalala also claims it was a particularly busy shift.

Shabalala also faces allegations of attempting to catheterise another patient, Patient A, on January 14, 2009, when it was not in her best interests.

In addition, she failed to stop when the patient indicated she was in pain, the NMC claims.

After the alleged incident involving patient B, Shabalala is said to have told a colleague: “I am not paid to look after people like patient B”, or words to that effect.

If found guilty of misconduct, Shabalala could be struck off the nursing register.

The hearing continues.

MORNING NEWS

Gugu Shabalala ??????

I have seen worse, and always think that anyone with a name that doesn’t fit the norm in the host country, should not be allowed to remain unless they adopt a western name. Don’t like it? Tuff. Then go home where they all speak and spell like you do.

Posted by peiper     on 06/27/2012 at 04:49 AM   
Filed Under: • Health and Safety • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - June 13, 2012

Sugar Sugar

No, not a revival of the old Archies tune, a broadside against the sweetening up of the American and English diets.

Are you fat? Blame Nixon.

And once again, it’s looking more and more that Atkins was right. Low glycemic index eating, Italian, Greek, Mediterranean eating styles, caveman diet, gluten free diet ... it all boils down to 1) eliminate the excess sugars, 2) eliminate or severely reduce the white flour, 3) get rid of as many artificial additives as possible, 4) curb your sweet tooth.

Read a good essay on why everyone in the UK is a right fat bastard ... although it looks like the PC term is “bariatrically challenged”.  Ambulances with fat spatulas and people cranes? Eww.

But hey, Americans are just as piggy.

And it’s a conspiracy theory? Agribusiness and government knowingly behind the whole thing, blaming fat while loading us down with sugars and fast carbs? Or could it just be an unforeseen and unintended consequence of the Green Revolution and the rise of global scale agribusiness?




h/t to Mom

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2012 at 11:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Saturday - June 02, 2012

BAD white lady. Naughty. You may not complain about dark nurse just cos she’s incompetent

The usual, here we go again you’re a raaaaaaaaacist.  Says the BIG MA-MOO. You will of course know who ma-moo is but here’s a clue.
It ain’t the clean and well groomed white lady. No. She was a patient in a hospital and complained about the treatment given her and a blind patient on her ward.
She reported the nurse in question which it turns out was a great mistake because, that nurse is a member of a holy fraternity or in this case I guess sorority, whose supervisor the nice white lady spoke to, also happened to belong to that holy and much favored minority (not for too much longer unfortunately) and the supervisor who only a year or so before was taken from her tree happily eating bananas and given cloths and made a nurse supervisor, got very angry at the nice white lady and accused her of being ,,,, all together now.  Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacist.  Well now kiddies, if she wasn’t before she got a good taste of why so many white folks are.  But so damn few of em understand that.  Screaming race always shuts down the debate.  I would say that by today’s standards and how that silly word has been applied, anyone can be a racist for merely preferring one group to another. I mean, like seeks like and always has.  So I suppose there’s a certain degree of racist thinking there. So what? Big deal.  Take a look.

Patient who complained about black nurse after treatment left her with punctured lung is accused of racism

Sandra Hynes, 50, went in for acid reflux treatment but following complications was left with a punctured lung

Nurse fed hot soup to a blind patient leaving her blistered and screaming

By NEIL SEARS

A patient who complained about the treatment she and a frail blind woman received at the hands of a poorly-trained nurse was branded a racist.

Sandra Hynes, 50, had only gone into hospital for a simple operation to relieve her acid reflux, but following complications was left with a punctured right lung.

She had to stay in for an extra two weeks and was put on morphine and oxygen to cope with her pain.

But further problems arose when her morphine drip and oxygen needed replenishing over a weekend.

Astonishingly, the staff on duty had not been trained in how to insert a ‘cannula’ needle into her hand, and struggled to provide new oxygen, leaving her in excruciating pain.

When she was given morphine orally instead, and began hallucinating and crying, a member of staff told her off.

Her patience finally snapped when a nurse fed hot soup to a blind patient in the bed next to her, leaving her blistered and screaming.

Mrs Hynes told the junior nurse – who happened to be black – that she should have tested the temperature of the soup before serving it.

Moments later the nurse’s superior, Staff Nurse Maureen Nwadike – who is also black – arrived in the ward, and told horrified Mrs Hynes: ‘You’re racist.’

Despite being in great pain, the patient grabbed a Zimmer frame and tried to leave the hospital.

Now, following a complaint, the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in West London has apologised for her appalling treatment.

Last night Mrs Hynes, of Grays in Essex, said: ‘I was called a racist for complaining about a lady getting scalded, and because no one was able to fix my morphine over the whole weekend. It was a horrific experience.

‘I was in terrible pain, and because it was over the weekend no one could do anything about it.

‘I was scared to be on the ward, and about what might happen while I was asleep.
‘At one stage I even took a Zimmer frame and tried to get out so I could call for help on the street.

‘I never want to go there again, however ill I am.’

Following her complaint, Senior Nurse Sian Davies admitted in a long letter:

‘It is recognised that there are indeed less doctors working at the weekend, which unfortunately resulted in a severe delay in reviewing your pain relief, which is not acceptable.

‘You also described how Nurse Hannah did not know how to change the oxygen. She was relatively new to the ward, not very confident, and has learnt from the experience.

‘And you described how Nurse Maureen Nwadike accused you of being racist.

‘The behaviour you described will not be tolerated and is not acceptable. I will be monitoring her communication skills.’

Contacted at her home in Thamesmead, South-East London, Mrs Nwadike, whose husband Anthony, 54, is a director of a private nursing business, refused to comment.

source

Posted by peiper     on 06/02/2012 at 01:42 PM   
Filed Under: • DIVERSITY BS • Health and Safety • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Thursday - May 24, 2012

national health service celebrates its transgender staff ….. why?

This is really tiresome.
How come and why isn’t there a special day to celebrate straight folks? Huh?
Where’s our parade? Where’s our flag?  Can we have a national straight week?
Why are the odd couples and transgender bending communities, of which there are not that many out of the entire population, why are they celebrated out of all proportion to their numbers?  I guess cos they are very well organized and have some serious bucks in the kitty.

OK, so anyway the times are tuff and money is tight, and the hospital trusts here are being squeezed claim some, even though the counter claim is that the hosp. trusts aren’t subject to the cuts.  But not long ago in our local, some wards were closed in an effort to save money.

It’s all about money and the govt. needing to make cuts where feasible and lets face it, there’s always a lot of duplication and jobs that are not critical, so the belts are being tightened. You would believe. Oh yeah?  Think so?
Well, apparently there is always money for some things and especially for special people.  Take a look.

NHS launches ‘diversity week’ with transgender art

The NHS has funded a “human rights week” with dozens of events including a photographic exhibition to celebrate transgender staff.

By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent

Hundreds of managers and front line workers are due to attend conferences and workshops on equality and diversity this week.
Patients’ groups criticised the spending at a time when services and jobs were under threat, as the NHS attempts to make £20 billion in efficiency savings.
The events include two all-day conferences involving at least 170 health care managers.

In addition, NHS Rotherham will host a week-long exhibition of “inspiring images” which promises to “celebrate the lives of transgender staff and patients”.
And NHS North West is promoting an “awareness raising timeline” to commemorate homosexual and transgender doctors and nurses.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said the health service was being hit hard by the demand for efficiency savings and could not afford an expensive week of events.
Funding should only be authorised when it could be shown that it would improve care for patients, she said.

“Ensuring equality and diversity needs to be one of the fundamental elements of the way an NHS trust operates. It shouldn’t need a costly and distracting week of events and conferences to ensure that this message is communicated effectively.”
At least 170 NHS managers working in human resources and leading programmes in equality and diversity are due to attend full-day conferences in London and Manchester. The fee of £199 per place – more than £30,000 in total – is expected to be paid by the NHS trusts which employ them.

The events will feature speakers from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the homosexual rights group Stonewall. Additional costs will be covered by sponsors including trade unions and training organisations.
The timeline created by NHS North West highlights “achievements of people from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community, and particularly those who have contributed to health care”, from ancient Greece to the present day.

They include James Barry, a British Army surgeon who lived as a man but was found to be female upon death in 1865, and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a 19th-century German “sexologist” said to be the first to speak publicly in defence of homosexuality.
NHS Employers, the body organising the first “NHS Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Week”, defended its decision to go ahead with the plans at a time of austerity, but was unable to say how much the week’s events will cost.

Dean Royles, director of the organisation, said: “I’m really proud that equality and diversity is something that employers take very seriously. NHS staff want to work in an environment that is fair, and diverse.
“And patients want to be treated without fear of discrimination because of their sexuality, gender, race or religion. NHS organisations recognise that there are large personal and cost implications for not getting this right.”

The organisation said individual NHS bodies across the country had taken their own decisions on how much to spend on their events.
The photography collection going on display in Rotherham this week has been touring NHS organisations since last June, after being funded by the Department of Health under the last Government.
The timeline, with an accompanying exhibition, was commissioned last year by NHS North West’s “equality and diversity team”.
Since the Coalition came to power in 2010 the NHS has been protected from budget cuts affecting most other Whitehall departments, and has been given rises just above inflation.

However, rising pressures from the costs of treating an ageing population mean services have been ordered to make £20 billion of “efficiency savings” by 2015 so extra funds can be released to the front line.

In November, Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said the leaders of the health service had a responsibility to taxpayers “to make sure that every pound of NHS money is spent as effectively as possible to deliver the best possible care”.
The Government has said clinical jobs should not be cut, but last week the Royal College of Nursing claimed more than 5,700 nurses posts had been lost since April 2010.
Ministers said they did not recognise the figures, and that the total number working for the NHS had fallen by 450.

Last year, an NHS hospital was at the centre of a gaffe when a job advertisement for a senior doctor carried the phrase “usual rubbish about equal opportunities”.

The advertisement, on a health service website, sought an anaesthetist to fill a one-year post at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University NHS Trust, Merseyside.

Following a complaint, the trust launched an investigation and the wording was replaced with “We are committed to promoting equality and diversity”.

source, telegraph

Posted by peiper     on 05/24/2012 at 12:46 PM   
Filed Under: • DIVERSITY BS • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - May 16, 2012

FOREIGN DOCTORS WITH MINIMUM LANGUAGE SKILLS

I’m not trying to compete with Drew for the prizewinning moonbat warning award, and while this may not beat his posting of that poor guy who got fired cos he turned in a found gun, this sure does come close if it doesn’t tie.

For some time now there has apparently been quite a problem with foreign doctors working in this country, whose English leaves much to be desired. In fact, there have been reports of doctors who hardly understood the language of the country they were attending to patients in.  There have been some disasters and a promise to do more to vet doctors from other countries more closely.  Now wouldn’t you think that should have been the rule from the get-go?
Hang there ... wait a minute.  This is gonna get sticky. Not so cut and dried as you may think. Remember, this isn’t the USA where we all speak Spanish.
Right. Not funny.

Here’s the headline.

Foreign doctors who can’t speak proper English to be struck off: NHS must check language skills

By JAMES CHAPMAN

Doctors will be struck off if they cannot speak proper English amid fears that patients’ lives are being put at risk, the Health Secretary will say today.

Hospitals and GPs’ surgeries will also be legally obliged to make sure foreign medics have a proper grasp of the language and the way the NHS works.

Andrew Lansley plans to change the rules so doctors found to fall short of the required standards can be permanently barred from practising in this country.

Under the existing system, as many as 23,000 doctors from Europe have registered to work in the NHS despite never having been asked if they can speak English properly.

This gets interesting right about here.

To comply with EU freedom-of-movement requirements, continental doctors and nurses are allowed to work without any formal NHS training.

They can be struck off only if they are found to have harmed patients.

What? So they get to work but the public has to be open to just one mistake. As in a deadly one? Like this?

In one notorious case, pensioner David Gray died after out-of-hours locum Dr Daniel Ubani gave him up to 20 times the recommended amount of diamorphine to treat pain in his kidneys.

The German doctor had failed an English test for one primary care trust, so simply applied to work at another.

(he was German like I’m a rocket scientist. He was NOT German. Does Ubani look like a German word or name? )

UNEDITED AND ALL OF STORY HERE

I only used that article to set the stage. This one is more recent and falls into another category.
Guy visits doctor who happens to be Spanish but.
no entiendo Inglés.  okay I exaggerated a bit the doc may have understood a little but not enough.
Because the doctor reported to authorities that the fellow, who was a bus driver, was also a drunk. But he made NO tests. Nice huh?
So now the patient is out of a job. 

A whole year of hell, thanks to a foreign doctor

By KELVIN MACKENZIE

Last week, I raised the uncomfortable issue of foreign doctors working in this country, and targeted the offensive behaviour of a Spanish consultant. I have since received, and investigated to my satisfaction, an even more shocking case.

Bus driver Kevin Jones, aged 53, turned up with his wife, Samantha, to see Dr Antonio Serrano, a Spaniard, at his surgery in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

Mr Jones was suffering pain from swollen legs. Almost immediately, the doctor diagnosed gout and asked how much he drank. He said he might have a pint or two after work and if he went out with his wife and friends at the weekend, a couple of spirits.

When he discovered Mr Jones drove a bus for a living — and had done for 30 years — his attitude changed and, without any research into any kind of alcohol dependency — such as liver or blood tests — he said he would write to the DVLA to have his licence revoked.

Mr Jones told me: ‘This is where the language barrier hit home. He took it that I drank every night, and when I tried to explain, he wouldn’t listen and just spoke over me.’

Several days later, Dr Serrano wrote to the DVLA. Mr Jones asked to see another doctor at the surgery, who agreed to send Mr Jones for blood, liver and kidney tests over a six-week period, all of which showed that Mr Jones was not alcohol dependent.

By now, though, Mr Jones had been signed off sick by his employers, Countryliner.

Astonishingly, without asking for any evidence, the DVLA took the doctor’s word and revoked not only his bus driver’s licence but also his car and motorbike licence.

Mr Jones, who earned £17,000 a year, says: ‘It was a living hell. I could not persuade the DVLA that I was not alcohol dependent, and the only person who could get it revoked was Dr Serrano, who refused to do so.’

By July last year, Mr Jones resigned from the bus company while he battled to clear his name. He had seen other doctors who, although they could not rule out gout, said it was most likely he had arthritis.

READ THE REST OF IT HERE AND THE DOCTOR’S REPLY

Posted by peiper     on 05/16/2012 at 12:59 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Saturday - April 28, 2012

Bang Zoom!

Posted by Drew458     on 04/28/2012 at 11:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • Humor • Obama, The One •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Tuesday - April 10, 2012

the cure for snoring …. ouch?

There’s an old expression that goes bite your tongue before speaking in anger.
I don’t know of any expressions with regard to those who snore, but did see this today and immediately thought OUCH when I read their very large headline.
CUT OFF A BIT OF YOUR TONGUE?
Good grief. Just the thought of it sends shivers.
Be easier and cheaper to start using that spare room.
Besides, I’m not too sure with no offence intended to the good Herr Doktor, but were I ever to have that sort of treatment or anything close, I want to be fully able to pronounce the doc’s name.  Especially in this case when I first said it wrong and it came out, Gotcha.
I am terrible.  My attitude is guilt inducing.

It’s a rather long article but here are the highlights in a manner of speaking. There’s lots more at the link. Actually, it was interesting. I didn’t think at first it would be. I just kept seeing the headline. But I started reading and got caught up in it.

Want to stop snoring? Cut off a bit of your tongue
By ANNA HODGEKISS

THE SURGEON
Mr Bhik Kotecha is a consultant surgeon at The Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, London.
Around 40 per cent of the adult population are snorers and 10 per cent of these have some degree of sleep apnoea.
There are two forms — obstructive sleep apnoea is the most common.

This is where an obstruction — perhaps the tonsils, the tongue flopping back in the throat or nasal polyps — blocks the airway.
Sometimes the obstruction is caused by the muscles and soft tissues in the throat relaxing and collapsing so much that they cause a total blockage.
Men are twice as likely to suffer as women. That’s because they are more likely to store excess weight around the neck, which puts extra pressure on the tissues so they are more likely to collapse.

there are serious medical implications. Because it deprives the body of oxygen, the condition increases the chance of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Memory and concentration can also be impaired.
The good news is that GPs are increasingly aware of the condition. 

The condition is diagnosed with a sleep study and the recommended treatment is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP).
A mask connected to a machine blows air into the throat, keeping the airway open — but drop-out rates are high.
In terms of surgery, until now it has been difficult to access the base of the tongue.

But a new robotic technique pioneered in the U.S. means we have 360 degree access to the area and a 3D view. 
The laser shaves off the top layer of the back of the tongue. It works at 300 degrees Celsius and seals the blood vessels as it goes, so there should be no bleeding. The procedure takes around two hours.

The operation costs £12,000 to £15,000 and is available on the NHS, or privately at the Princess Grace Hospital in London.  ($19 to $23,000)

Read all of it HERE

Posted by peiper     on 04/10/2012 at 10:46 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Thursday - March 29, 2012

lost in translation?

Swedish health authorities have come under criticism over the death of a woman whose repeated calls to emergency services were ignored because she was still able to talk.

Jill Soderberg, 22, died in her home in the town of Timra, 241 miles (389km) north of Stockholm, on January 20, 2011, shortly after she had placed her third and last call to SOS Alarm emergency services requesting an ambulance, news website The Local reported Tuesday.

However, every time she rang, as per procedure, operators connected her to Vasternorrland County nurses who deemed that she was not sufficiently ill for an ambulance because she could still speak.

“I can’t breathe,” Soderberg, who was suffering chest pains, told operators, according to transcripts of the calls. “I want you to come and help me.”

“The operator considered her to still be communicating verbally and decided that she didn’t need an ambulance,” Jill Soderberg’s mother, Annika Soderberg, said.

The elder Soderberg said she had asked SOS Alarm to explain the logic behind refusing someone an ambulance on the basis that they were speaking.

“How could you even call for an ambulance in the first place?” she said, adding, “No one could answer that one.”

So much for nationalized health care.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/29/2012 at 08:26 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Friday - February 10, 2012

Screw Up In Hants

The country of England is divided into a confusing array of local areas, some of which have a level of government. These are called counties, although some are quite small. There are 83 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, and there are 48 ceremonial counties, and there are 4 official divisions, and there are 9 regions, and each category covers the same area as the others. It’s confusing, but it’s England, and that’s what they are there for. Have you ever tried to read an English postal address? Good luck. West of London is a county, a zone, that might actually comprise two counties, Hampshire and Southhampton.  This is Peiper’s corner of the land, and, it being England, both areas are called Hants.  And this makes sense if you’re English. And the Nanny State is alive and well there, full speed ahead.

The procedure was carried out in Southampton, Hants, as part of a government initiative to drive down teenage pregnancies. As many as nine secondary schools in the city are thought to have been involved. But it has caused a backlash from parents who weren’t aware that their daughters had been fitted with the 4cm device, which sits under the skin. It is currently unknown exactly how many youngsters have taken part in the scheme.

Health chiefs have defended sexual health services going into schools, saying teenage pregnancies had dropped by 22 per cent as a result.

But campaigners from the Family Education Trust say the implant fuels the flames of promiscuity by giving girls licence to have underage sex. Norman Wells, director of the trust, has urged health chiefs to look at ways of discouraging sexual activity amongst children in the first place.

He said: “Schemes like these inevitably lead to boys putting pressure on girls to have sex. “They can now tell their girlfriends: ‘You can get the school clinic to give you an implant, so you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant.’ “They’ll tell them they don’t have to face the embarrassment of going to see their doctor, and it’s all confidential so their mum doesn’t need to know a thing. “Parents send their children to school to receive a good education, not to be undermined by health workers who give their children contraceptives behind their backs.”

A 13-year-old girl who had a contraceptive implant fitted at school without her mother’s knowledge said she wanted the procedure because she “felt like having sex”.

The teenager is one of 33 schoolgirls who have been fitted with the device in Southampton, Hants, as part of a controversial government initiative to drive down teenage pregnancies.

Now she has broken her silence to defend her actions, saying she believes she acted responsibly by taking measures to stop herself getting pregnant.

And her mother insisted she was “proud” of her daughter, although she claimed performing a minor surgical procedure at school without parental consent was “morally wrong”.

Emotionless detached promiscuity is one of the main tools in the Red Handbook for destroying a civilization. An amoral culture with no family values, no sense of nationalism, and a ruined economy is little more than a baying mob, ripe for takeover. But that’s a side issue, a root cause. Back to the story.

HORRY CLAP ARE THERE NO PARENTS IN BLOODY ENGLAND ANY LONGER???? What do they do, drop the babies out of the womb and deliver them to the council creche for raising, feeding, and indoctrination???

Yeah, I know, 13 is a tough age for girls. They’re both stupid and rebellious, generally going around in a state of near depression all the time, hating everything for every reason, embarrassed by everything, and all desperately mad to fit in. Isn’t this why the English invented horses? The pony club? Give the girls something to do to keep them out of trouble, something they can be responsible for and care about, something they can do in small groups of other girls while talking about the near future and trying to deal with the sudden hormonal soup of their bodies, something that doesn’t abandon them instantly to the predatory world? I’m not a dad, or an expert on little girls, but I was pretty sure the natural progression was years of pink, then horses, then sport, then boys. Not from Pink directly to I’m sotted, shag me arse in this alley, no worries!” in one go.

What happened to parenting? Morals? Self-respect? Maybe they really do need Sharia law. Or isolated boarding schools with really tall spiky iron fences and warders.

And the schools. Oh my, the schools. Nerve much, or are they acting in utter desperation because they have to? If the parents have given up or never bothered, and the big bowls of free condoms in the hallways aren’t doing the job, and no one else will do a thing to try and keep little children from having littler children, are they stepping up as batsmen to defend this sticky wicket? Or are they one of the main driving powers of Marxist based anarchy, forcing sexualization on the nation’s youth, like it or not?

13 is far too young an age to be sexually active, even in a country where the general age of consent is just 16. Not that this is only England’s problem, or one that belongs only to the 21st century. Not that I didn’t know a bevy of girls back in my day (1975) who had rounded their heels at that age or even earlier, and were defiantly proud of it, no matter how many abortions they had had. I knew of at least a dozen of them, and as far as I know, they all grew up to be trash.

Far more info at the above links, with links to many more similar articles.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/10/2012 at 06:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • Nanny State • Sex • UK •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner