I was at work in my Spanish A&E department on Wednesday during a World Cup football match. The department was empty for several hours and the waiting area totally deserted.
On any other day, having a quiet department is a blessing and it doesn’t happen very often at all, but on Wednesday it bothered me. It is an international thing that A&E departments all over the world become quiet during important sport events and particularly with football. This can only have a reading to it; for many patients A&E is a place of convenience and not a place for real emergencies.
What sort of emergencies are those that stop being such emergencies if there is a good match on? Anything that can wait for the final whistle of a sport involving some men in shorts kicking a ball around is most definitively not urgent. It might be time to redefine what is appropriate for an ED: “All those mental or physical pathologies of recent importance that cannot wait till the end of a football match, even if it is the World Cup”
I guess it is obvious that I am not fond of football but really it’s the footballers I dislike and even more nowadays. The economic crisis has hit Spain so hard that some professionals, like us doctors, are having our salaries decreased by a minimum of 5%. In the meantime, the ball-kickers are protected by a law which keeps them as low tax payers and, even worse, if they win the World Cup they get a massive bonus.
Isn’t winning the World Cup or even just being in the national team enough reward? Shouldn’t I get an extra payment every time I treat a fracture, reduce a dislocation or diagnose an acute abdomen? Should these guys being rewarded for doing their job well? Outrageous.
There is a lot of talk about getting the patients to pay part of their treatment in Spain at the moment. The government has denied it categorically which of course is always the best indicator that they are about to promote it (yes, I am a cynic). I am all for a free national health system but surely there should be some sort of penalty for those patients who make inappropriate use of key services like A&E.
And that gives me another idea just as I write: our international footballers should be financially penalised when they lose a match, too. The carrot is clearly not working for us so maybe the stick will.
Tags: Charges
At least the Spanish team appears harmonious, look at the French - bunch of petulant premadonnas who don’t want to play for their country.
And it looks like our very own John Terry would like to join them. The beautiful game - I don’t think so.
I’m afraid real emergencies can and do wait for the end of the match -
Last world cup, I had a patient who experienced excruciating back pain when England scored their first, collapsed on the floor when they scored the second but wouldn’t let his wife call an ambulance until the final whistle had blown. He survived his ruptured aneurysm, but only just.
To paraphrase Bill Shankly -
Football is not a matter of life and death… it’s much more important than that.
PS Hope Spain do well today - I have them in the sweepstake
How motivated can 11 multimillionaire 20 something years olds get. Bring back the Charlton boys
the footballers are also going to be an excepted group from the new british skilled migrants cap, so if they don’t like their recption back in ghana/brazil post loosing, they’re free to come here…