My friend ScrubOne suggests that my next post will be on this. Who am I to argue with such wisdom? A deluge of abusive drunks is straining Wellington Hospital’s emergency department, clogging its systems and demoralising staff to such an extent that at least one doctor is considering leaving her job. Nurses say they dread [...]
The Herald on Sunday carried an article (not online yet! Wake up HoS!) by Andre Hueber quoting Dr. Tim Parke, the Clinical Director of Auckland Hospitals Emergency Department saying that he thought that “lengthening GP’s opening hours would improve patient care and free-up much needed hospital beds”. Dr. Parke advocates extending GP hours to 10pm [...]
The Herald has a fascinating example of how statistics can be filtered through an agenda to say, more or less, what you want. The latest set of statistics from the Children’s Social Health Monitor have been interpreted by Prof Cindy Kiro and the current Children’s Commissioner, John Angus, to mean that the recession is having [...]
The editorial in the Weekend Herald today is one of the more insightful commentaries on medicine I have seen. The Editor correctly points out that many of the percieved failings of the medical fraternity have little to do with the facilities, number of staff or quality of clinical acumen. In today’s paper, members of the [...]
There seems to be quite a lot of debate around the subject of organ donation at the moment. The Herald today warns people off looking for “bootleg kidneys“. The university of Victoria ran a conference yesterday on the issue and Eric Crampton at Offsetting Behaviour has run a series of articles here, here and here. [...]
Dr Tim Parke, the clinical director of the adult emergency department at Auckland City Hospital, puts his concerns into an article in the Herald today. He writes that, in his opinion, the proposed use of public facilities for extra private procedures will produce a two tier system where, eventually, richer patients will have better medical [...]
The news that Timaru Emergency Department is “turning away” patients (actually, sending them to their GPs) is exciting Labour’s health spokesperson, the barely noticeable Ruth Dyson. Labour MP and health spokesperson Ruth Dyson believes essential frontline health services are being cut. “You can’t get much more frontline than the emergency department. The Government promised there [...]
A recent high quality study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that the use of intravenous drugs in out-of-hospital resuscitation does not lead to better survival rates – just more admissions to hospital. This is a significant finding for two reasons. First, it emphasises that good quality CPR and early access to [...]
It is always a tragedy when a young life is lost, but it is especially heart-wrenching when a young man dies from something you would not normally expect such a person to die from. Such is the case of Dean Carroll, the 22 year old who presented to an emergency department and left with a [...]
One of the hallmarks of emergency departments is the unpredictable nature of the throughput. Accidents, in particular, are relatively unforeseeable although certain types do tend to cluster. Cuts with knives seem to congregate around mealtimes (for obvious reasons) and minor traffic-related injuries have an obviously predictable flurry at rush hour. I recall analysing the data from [...]
