Yet another child has been attacked by vicious dogs and severely injured. The dogs have been destroyed but the owner, unfortunately remains very much alive and able to own more dogs. Sure, he will be banned from owning dogs, but seeing as he is unlikely to have microchipped or licensed his previous dogs, this will [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article.
Well, half the headline is ok…
DHBs, union clash over plan to axe 20 doctors
Plans to cut 20 resident doctor positions at Auckland hospitals will increase the pressure on remaining staff and threatens standards of patient care, a unionist says.
But the [...]

The MacDoctor was doing locums (aka mercenary medicine) for about five years and only settled in a position this year. Technically, of course, all jobs could be considered mercenary, to some extent, because few of us would work if we didn’t get paid for it. However, there is no doubt that money is the most [...]

Such an interesting range of reactions in the blogosphere to Paula Bennett’s revealing of the amount of benefit the two ladies who features the the Herald over the weekend are receiving. Natasha Fuller and Jennifer Johnston appear in the article entitled Govt axe destroys dreams, claiming that Bennet’s removal of the allowance for sole parent [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. (MacDoctor definition)
And now for a spot more medical spam…
Doctors fear added training strain
While the $25 million Budget boost for training extra doctors is a step in the right direction, it will also create problems of its own, say those [...]

After placing absurdly onerous language requirements and a blanket ban on nursing courses that are less than four years (regardless of quality), the Nursing Council has now unveiled it’s true concern about Philippino nurses – the sudden profusion of nurses in “nursing education”. Apparently nursing courses have increased from 30,000 in training in 2004 to 450,000 this [...]

The Editor of the Herald rightly calls for the extremely dumb and pointless cap on university funding to be removed. As far as I can tell, this was placed on universities as a reaction to some courses of very dubious value being offered in order to generate funds. As the editorial points out, it makes [...]

I see that medical council is starting consultation over a peer-review system for doctors. I like Ron Paterson’s comment on the idea.
“It is the body that is saying to the New Zealand public ‘yes, this doctor has a warrant of fitness’, and I think at the moment we have a tougher warrant of fitness system [...]

The Dom Post runs it’s own wowser article today on the cost of sending Hawke’s Bay District Health Board chief executive Chris Clarke to a training week at Oxford University. Apparently the Dom Post considers $36,000 to be a lot of money in the context of CEO training. I find this particularly amusing as I know [...]

Have you noticed how often people are quoted, (presumably because they are “experts” or, perhaps, represent an “expert” organisation) yet they say precisely diddly squat? There’s a good example of this in today’s Herald. The New Zealand Medical Association (an organisation whose purpose, frankly, is a mystery to me) is being quoted concerning the doctor [...]