You know times are bad when you can’t even trust your colleagues at the clinic …
Here's hoping Dr Hedgeh isn't a reader
Messy Business
Weird and wonderful stories from the theatres, wards and corridors of our hospitals. To contribute email editorial@hospitaldr.co.uk
Doctor gets all prickly over name change
By Mike Broad - 11th May 2012 2:41 pmDo you really want to read any old Olympic story?
By Mike Broad - 10th May 2012 2:15 pmOh dear. I guess I’m going to get a lot of these in my inbox … PRs looking to capitalise on readers’ perceived desire to consume all things Olympic.
But, really! Do GE Healthcare really think that hospital doctors want to see pictures of lorry trailers in car parks? There’s only one way to find out (why do I always hear Harry Hill shouting “Fight, fight” when I use that phrase now…).
Very interesting Olympic stuff
I’m going to post the pic and the info and see if anyone reads this page. Fiver says they won’t.
Three large ‘Relocatable’ units containing GE Healthcare medical equipment for the athlete’s ‘Polyclinic’ at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, arrived in dramatic fashion in London from Rotterdam yesterday.
The three 18 metre long steel units, housing GE Healthcare MRI and CT scanners, were kitted out in Rotterdam before being shipped, driven and finally craned into place at the front of the Polyclinic, inside the Athletes’ Village in the Olympic Park with the Games less than 80 days away.
Approximately 14,000 athletes from 205 countries will participate in the Games, with another 11,000 coaches, International Olympic Committee members and officials. All will be potential visitors to the Polyclinic which will be up and running from mid-July through to September, throughout the Games period.
In the coming weeks the Polyclinic will start to see the arrival of a broad array of GE Healthcare technologies including MRI, CT, Ultrasound, ECGs, IT and Xray. Such technologies ensure all competing athletes have access to leading technologies, within close proximity of their competing venues and also living quarters.
Dr Phil O’Connor, consultant radiologist from Leeds, who will run the Polyclinic expects to conduct about 600 MRI examinations there during the Games. He said: “The Polyclinic will house some of the best equipment in the world for the best athletes in the world. The arrival of the MR and CT equipment is an important stepping stone in ensuring we’re ready to go when the time comes – in the not too distant future!”
ps. If anyone posts that this is the most interesting thing we’ve run in weeks, I’m closing the site down…
pps. None of this has anything to do with the fact that I applied for tickets for just about everything and received bugger all in return. Can’t believe I’m going to miss the beach volley ball …
You’ve hardly got going as a doctor at 68 …
By Mike Broad - 3rd May 2012 4:19 pmAs the reality of the NHS pension reforms start to hit (who noticed the increase in their contributions this month? No?! You’re definitely earning too much then) consultants of a certain age are bracing themselves for working until they’re 68.
68?! “Pah, you’ve hardly started,” Dr Leila Denmark, would have said were she still alive. She practised for another 35 years. Retiring at 103 and dying recently at 114. The American paediatrician started work in Atlanta in 1928.
It looks like there will be a fair few following her lead over the pond…
That Lansley fellow - he really takes the biscuit
By Mike Broad - 30th March 2012 9:41 amI’ve no idea whether the health secretary likes pasties as much as his senior colleagues (although one gets the feeling that neither Osborne nor Cameron have ever stepped foot in a Greggs), but it seems as though he is partial to the odd biscuit.
The Department of Health splashed out £109,017 on tea and biscuits in just three months.
Taxpayers have paid the six-figure sum for free ‘refreshments’ for staff and visitors to the department’s London offices between January and March. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett, who uncovered the figure, slammed the department for its “reckless spending”.
The health minister was also criticised by the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Matthew Elliott, its chief executive, offered the most digestive-able quote of the day, said: “Taxpayers will be utterly staggered that they are paying for a six-figure biscuit bill racked up by hobnobbing bureaucrats.”
Heart stopping moment in downtown Mexico City
By Mike Broad - 19th March 2012 4:30 pmShouldn’t laugh really. Police helicopter dramatically sweeps down out of the sky bringing a heart for transplant in Mexico City. Medics leap out and run across the tarmac as they try to get the organ to the recipient as quickly as possible. And that’s when they knock over the ‘cool box’ and the heart spills on to the ground…
Don’t worry, or ‘no se preocupe’, they say to themselves - we scooped it up so quickly that no one will have noticed … apart from those TV crews over there.
Apparently it wasn’t damaged and the ensuing operation on a 20-year-old woman was a success.
Andrew Lansley meets his ’supporters’ at Royal Free
By Mike Broad - 5th March 2012 11:25 pmGlad to see that docs have learned that it doesn’t do to barrack senior politicians. Last time this happened, the culprit was taken outside and shot (in Clarkson fashion). Well, he went on leave for a bit anyway.
So, what happens when health secretary Andrew Lansley goes walkabout round the Royal Free? Yep, you guessed it.
Now I may be speaking out of turn, but I’m starting to think that maybe his claims the profession are behind him might not actually be true. How many police officers is he going to need around him next time he needs to visit his local GP?
Will the health secretary be hunting for a new job soon?
By Mike Broad - 10th February 2012 9:46 amI live in the wilds of Norfolk and hunting is a big thing out here. Let’s face it, there’s not a lot else to do.
It has encouraged a rich diversity of ways to kill the local fauna. This ranges from the local landed gentry blasting pheasants with their shotguns, to skanky looking blokes in beaten up Landrovers sneaking out into the fields at night to take pot shots at deer with high velocity rifles.
So my fellow Norfolk dweller will be delighted with the latest ADDITION to these sad noble past-times.
Yo dude, it’s not about the money, money, money
By Mike Broad - 1st February 2012 2:32 pmAh, the age old battle between medics and surgeons for bragging rights isn’t just a UK thing.
Our orthopods might have stronger grips than anaesthetists (see previous post), but the ‘internists’ come out on top in this amusing American ‘commercial’.
Orthopods - strong, clever and not at all insecure
By Mike Broad - 21st January 2012 9:58 pmBMJ’s Xmas ‘funny’ is worth a mention (albeit a month late).
An orthopod or two were clearly enraged by THIS a couple of years ago. The rest of us - 70,000 and rising - watched it and sniggered.
The slighted orthopods didn’t just sit around smarting however. They bided their time and pulled together a ground-breaking piece of research that - for once and for all - puts anaesthetists back in their ‘box’.
Orthopods are stronger and cleverer - ip dip phooey, you gas monkeys and no returns!!! (I look forward to the return).
A lesson in how to bring a profession’s power to bear
By Mike Broad - 7th January 2012 8:35 pmNot exactly a ‘funny’ this week, more a point of interest.
I see that trainee doctors in Israel have won bonuses, higher pay, a commitment to only six late night and weekend shifts a month, and a contract review in 2015.
What did it take? Demonstrations, walk outs and mass resignations over a 160-day period. Israeli Medical Association chief Dr Leonid Eidelman even staged a 10-day hunger strike to pressure the government.
So are doctors in the UK going to be able to resist the NHS pension proposals, for example, with a disgruntled moan to their local BMA rep and a letter to their local MP.
Err, no.
However, even with the successful campaign of mass professional action in Israel there has been a price to pay. From now on, hospital doctors are going to have to clock in and out to show they are doing the hours they say.
Now don’t go giving the Department of Health any ideas…