Sometimes, it can be hard to give out quality health care.
Especially if the patient who sits in front of you does not share the same worldview. Instead, they would rather believe the homeopath, their alternative practitioner or chiropractor about why they're opening their bowels 20 times a day to blood.

It's horrifying and frustrating to explain to the same person that this is not because their bowel has a 'personality', but because it is a flare up of their inflammatory bowel disease. Frustrating even more to know that the advice that steroids and other interventions which would help the patient is now going in one ear and going out the other, and the drugs that you will prescibe her will go down the toilet, and she will take more sugar pills.

Or disappointed knowing that the patient in front of you who is having a heart attack, who is refusing the angioplasty that would stop that heart attack has a 20% chance of death before the month is out.

Or resigned to knowing that the person who refused to take more blood pressure tablets or to have further investigations, because they interfered with his 'yang' will probably have a stroke in the next 12 months.

On the other hand, sucesses include keeping a stroke patient in for speech and language therapy when the managers were browbeating the team to send him home. We sent him home when he could communicate effectively. Not before.

The woman who had some breathing difficulties and through she was going to die - solved by some nebulisers and some calm words. Sent me a very nice thank you letter copied to the Chief Exec. So far, in 5 years of practice, the only offical thank you from anyone I have ever had.

There will be shit medical professionals, and good medical professionals. But if you choose not to receive the 'full package of care' at a time when disaster can averted - be assured we will still be here, to offer you the full package, in whatever state you may be in.
(witty_ditty has made multiple miaows since, Mon 15 Mar 2010, 2:40, 3 replies)

At the end of the day
You are the expert, I will have what you think is best.
(Obi wanker nobi Its not a bug, its an unexpected feature, Mon 15 Mar 2010, 15:12, closed)

This.
If someone's spent more time learning how to make me better than I've spent falling over (and I fall over a lot), I tend to assume they know more than some mendacious cunt with an internet degree and a nice aura.

There was a lovely comment from a doctor in the Guardian(?) a few weeks ago about the popular hospital irritant known as 'Grolies' - Guardian Readers Of Limited Intelligence In Ethnic Skirts. It's my new favourite acronym.
(Shinigami, Mon 15 Mar 2010, 18:15, closed)

Don't get me started....
One of my works is for my local NHS. Inputting children's Immunisation details onto the database. We're all guaranteed to get upset by the parents that refuse all immunisations for their children, not the occasional "Ooops, forgot the clinic date, can we have another appointment soon please?" These are the "Immunisations weaken my children's immune system, and contain toxins, and are probably tested on animals, I couldn't possibly allow that" Yes, really... I know it's their choice as parents, but it's difficult to bear. Especially when they think nothing of whisking said unprotected children off to foreign parts twice a year. Mind, the clincher was a Crazy (and for all I know cat-infested) Lady that, instead of completing the HPV consent form (vaccine to protect her daughter from cervical cancer) like a sane person and just saying "No" Wrote all over the form accusing us of child abuse for suggesting that her daughter may "One day be so filthy as to catch a sexually transmitted infection" .. Grolies R Us?
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Wed 17 Mar 2010, 19:56, closed)