Messy Business

Weird and wonderful stories from the theatres, wards and corridors of our hospitals. To contribute email editorial@hospitaldr.co.uk

How Hospitaldr could learn a thing or two from the Daily Mail

By Mike Broad - 1st September 2010 10:28 am

Hospitaldr.co.uk, like all ‘publications’, has an editorial strategy. In a nutshell, it’s to provide hospital doctors with interesting, timely and relevant information. And, in the words of Robbie Williams, we also seek to entertain you…which brings me neatly to the Daily Mail’s editorial strategy.

Ok, ok, it might not actually be up on the wall in Paul Dacre’s office, but once you read the Victoria Line all the paper’s animosity towards the medical and social work professions falls into place.

I’m wondering whether I should adapt it for my lowly site (after all, it’s led to Dacre reportedly earning £1.65m a year). I spent several years of my 20s trying to make progress on the Northern Line during rush hour, with little success. On my map, I’d definitely replace Angel, Old Street and Bank with Revalidation, the NHS IT Programme and GP commissioning…

Liverpool Women’s Trust invests in male performance

By Mike Broad - 6th August 2010 1:49 pm

Oh dear, a smutty theme appears to be developing in this column.

First hospitals start renting out rooms for the filming of, ahem, adult entertainment.

Then they go and spend loads of money on building a room dedicated to enhancing the production of, ahem, sperm samples.

The Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust has spent £7,500 on developing a room which aids the process and includes a cool £500 on porn films.

Needless to say it has The Sun, in all its hypocrisy, extremely agitated.

Maybe the hospital should have taken a leaf out of the Royal Cornwall’s (less smutty) book, which spends just £5 a year on a couple of gentlemen’s magazines.

Like a bull in a china shop (or the renal unit)

By Mike Broad - 26th July 2010 3:55 pm

You’d have thought there was enough ‘bull’ being spoken in the NHS at the moment, particularly during power point presentations with headings like ‘Making efficiencies’ and ‘New commissioning structures’.

But that’s nothing compared to Kent and Canterbury Hospital.

Straight questions take Lansley to the brink

By Mike Broad - 16th July 2010 4:30 pm

Just when everyone is getting carried away that the white paper Liberating the Nash is taking us in a fresh and dynamic direction its author - the health secretary - went and cracked under some tough questioning from a fictional character.

Back to the drawing board then…

Debbie does Kensington and Chelsea after Dallas

By Mike Broad - 12th July 2010 1:04 pm

Let’s hope our cash strapped trusts don’t resort to some of the more desperate measures deployed in the past to raise a few quid.

Tory MP Penny Mordaunt revealed, during a debate in the House of Commons on transparent accounting, that when she was the director of Kensington and Chelsea Council one the local hospitals hired out a closed - but fully equipped ward - as a film set.

What type of film did they shoot? Well, let’s just say the ‘nurses’ were wearing latex uniforms, the ‘doctors’ had names like Butch and the cameraman focused on the many ‘invasive procedures’.

Mordaunt explained “Although I cannot claim to have seen the final picture - as I understand, these things are no longer claimable on parliamentary expenses - it was a big-budget affair and generated substantial income for the hospital.

“But apart from cheering up a few of the in-patients, it cannot be said to be contributing to the objectives of the primary care trust.”

Oh I don’t know, there are plenty of staff who are about to be shafted by their trusts…

Fees continue to go up while pay goes nowhere

By Mike Broad - 28th June 2010 2:18 pm

I couldn’t help but see some hypocrisy in the BMA’s representatives voting for a 2.5% increase in membership fees next year, when its very own junior doctors committee were last week banging on about how unfair increases in training charges were by the colleges.

A small but vocal minority wanted BMA membership fees to be tied to doctors’ pay increases from now on. “How can we sanction 2.5% when our pay will not increase for two years?” one said.

The JDC want to be involved in setting colleges’ training charges. Maybe the wider membership of the BMA should be involved in setting its fees?

Fortysomethings are swinging more than their golf clubs

By Mike Broad - 24th June 2010 4:20 pm

I’m nearly 40 and struggling to come to terms with it.

My hair has all but disappeared and my knees ache, particularly when I get up in the morning. It’s all starting to feel a bit like a slippy slope.

But, if Dutch research is anything to go by, being in your 40s and 50s can be a decidedly frisky experience. One in nine patients attending the Dutch STD clinics involved in the study proved to swingers with an average age of 43.

While the combined rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea were just under 5% in female prostitutes, they were over 10% among older swingers.

Apparently it’s hard to target the group with health services, unlike say gay men, because it’s a hidden - though clearly growing - culture.

And there was I thinking I’d just be playing a bit more golf…

Italian quacks make our problems look little league

By Mike Broad - 3rd June 2010 6:19 pm

Second guessing whether revalidation was for the chop was this month’s game. I lost. I’d heard from usually reliable sources that it was going. But then the new health secretary went and gave it a reprieve - for another year at least.

While I agree doctors should have to prove their ongoing competence, I think we need to chill out a little.

But maybe not as much as the Italians. A report this week revealed that between 10,000 and 15,000 doctors in Italy are unqualified.

More than a thousand people were charged last year with unauthorised exercise of a medical profession, including fake doctors, spurious dentists and even a few sham nurses.

Trouble is, the penalty is only a fine of up to €516 (£440).

“We catch phoneys who laugh in our face,” Captain Marco Datti of the carabinieri told the daily La Repubblica. “They say: ‘I’ll just pay €500, change premises and start again’.”

A self-appointed urologist told La Repubblica he had only been unmasked because “My ex-wife reported me because I had another woman. Otherwise, I’d still be a doctor.” Interviewed by the paper on condition it did not reveal his name, he said he had been able to enrol for training as a specialist in Trieste by means of false self-certification.

And there’s us getting all hot and bothered about a bit of CPD…

The things they say: one foot in the grave

By Mike Broad - 25th May 2010 9:30 am

Guy Finch, a surgeon in Northampton, provides an excellent example of why we need more examples of The Things They Say…

A gentleman was referred to Mr Finch with a left inguinal hernia. He also had a cough impulse in the right groin. This is how the latter was described in the referral letter:

Mr Smith has a coffin pulse on the right, although no symptoms there.

I think we can conclude that this is the final nail for poor Mr Smith.

Keep the misspellings coming to editorial@hospitaldr.co.uk

From the archive: No time to be sheepish 

Be wary of swear words and an uncaring electorate

By Mike Broad - 10th May 2010 11:25 am

Mind your language. That’s the message from Gary Walker’s case. Who he? He’s the former chief executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, who was dismissed back in February.

The trust’s given reason for dismissing Mr Walker was that he swore in meetings, but he claims he was sacked for putting patients before targets. He has launched a claim for unfair dismissal.

All health professionals clearly need to mind their Ps and Qs. Doctors4Justice has dug out a portentous BMJ study from 1999 which monitored surgeons’ swearing in theatre.

Orthopaedic surgeons predictably won hands down (16.5 swear words within an eight hour shift). Then it was general surgeons, gynaecologists, urologists and lastly - and definitely most politely - ENT surgeons.

Gary went on stand against health minister Gillian Merron in her Lincoln seat in the election as an independent. At the time he said: “Under the current government the NHS has become obsessed with targets and has created a culture of fear.”

Unfortunately for Gary he won just 222 votes and fell short of the 2% of the vote required to get his deposit back. Oh feck, he said (probably). 

By way of consolation, Merron lost her seat to Conservative candidate Karl McCartney, who won by 1,058 votes.