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Doctor Slams Hospital's "Please" Policy
Administrators at England's Worthing Hospital are insisting that doctors say the magic word when writing orders for blood tests on weekends. If a doctor refuses to write "please" on the order, the test will be refused. From the article: "However, a doctor at the hospital said on condition of anonymity that he sees the policy as a money-saving measure that could prove dangerous for patients. 'I was shocked to come in on Sunday and find none of my bloods had been done from the night before because I'd not written "please,"' the doctor said. 'I had no results to guide treatment of patients. Myself and a senior nurse had to take the bloods ourselves, which added hours to our 12-hour shifts. This system puts patients' lives at risk. Doctors are wasting time doing the job of the technicians.'"
Greetings and Salutations;
While I sense a certain amount of repressed anger in this post, my recent experience of spending four days in hospital tend to re-enforce the overall view of the ER doctors. While I have no complaints about the technical competency of the doctor who sealed off the seven ulcers in my esophagus, trying to get him to discuss my illness and ways that I could deal with it was like trying to pull up a manhole on the road with a screwdriver! I was left with the impression that he considered talking to me to be a waste of time, both because I was obviously too old and stupid to understand anything he said about the state of my body, and, that it would be a waste of time to discuss long-term treatment with me.
I will say, though, that the nurses and technicians that I interacted with over that four day period were top notch. They provided excellent care, and, interacted with me as if I was actually a valuable human, and, dealt with the terribly chaotic schedule of an intensive care wing with good humor and a positive attitude. Actually, the only problem I had was that I have terrible veins in my hands and arms (small, buried deep, and, with a huge tendency to slither away or go flat when a needle gets near them), so, the techs that came in to get blood samples had QUITE a challenge. I was fairly sure that after the first day, they were down there drawing straws, to see who got the short one and had to come poke me.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
As someone in the medical profession, when you get tired/rushed/etc... you lose one of two things:
Guess which one kills people or gets you sued when lost?
-- The Genesis project? What's that?