NHS

The NHS can't seem to make up their mind or find the right balance. Doctors need to comply with the European Working Time Directive. The EWTD interferes with the training of junior doctors. If doctors over work they make more mistakes. This however leads to poor continuity of care.

Is there a solution? Can you actually have it all?

Let's organise this a bit more:

1. Without EWTD: Better training with continuity of care. Overtime and mistakes
2. With EWTD: Less time on the job, (does it lead to less mistakes?), worse training with no continuity of care.

Is it possible to strike a right balance? Some way where the wards can be adequately staffed. 3 shifts per day? Too many doctors in training, not enough doctors and definitely not enough consultant posts. Are we too expensive? Maybe the NHS just doesn't have enough money.

Things where I work seem to be constantly changing for the worse. They had finally found a way to adequately cover the admissions unit and the wards, they had a good admissions proforma..and then they changed it all. Both for the worse.

Am I just whinging? If they change handover for the better surely it will all work out.

Hospitals are constantly telling us they don't have enough money. Cutting down on staff. Not enough money for bleeps. How do they expect us to believe them when they go off and buy 25 iphones for one hospital? To top it off, the hospital has poor network coverage, and the phone itself needs constant charging. They do this tho show that they "care" enough to keep changing and "fixing" the system.

Truth is they're better off spending money on bleeps. They should go back to the old system. iphones are a complete waste of money for hospital on-call purposes.


As to the EWTD...I'm afraid I have no solution. It will be a case of trial and error.

On another tangent - people don't appreciate the NHS enough. I don't think they quite understand how expensive healthcare is. Everyone tries to say: "we pay our taxes". Well, so do we. PET scan for 1 patient - over a hundred pounds. Some eye drops - over 300 pounds per month per patient. If everyone is properly treated - can we fulfill all these requirements?

Healthcare workers are over-worked and under-appreciated. Did you know that google actually treats their employees well? The idea being that a happy customer is a loyal customer. Same goes for employees. Every day that passes I feel more and more cynical, less appreciated, overworked and unbelievably frustrated with the whole system. I need to leave this city. It can't be this bad everywhere.