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 [...]
Dear Mr. Ryall I hear you are occasionally dropping in to emergency departments unannounced and talking to patients. This is excellent news. Under no circumstances should you continue to sound defensive about this in any way. After all, exactly who is the hospital service for, if not the patients accessing it? How can it be [...]
It has been interesting reading the various responses to the government’s plan to ban smoking in prisons. Most have been quite predictable. The libertarians have scoffed at the idea of a ban. The left-wing blogs have droned on about human rights. Most of the right-wing blogs take the tone that prisoners forfeit their rights upon [...]
The Herald on Sunday contains articles on two extremely misfortunate deaths. The first is Lam Xuan Hu, a 24-year-old Vietnamese student who died when a wheel from a truck, traveling in the opposite direction on the freeway in Auckland, came adrift and crashed through a bus. This unfortunate young man, a recent arrival to New [...]
For the second time this week MacDoctor disappeared from the blogosphere. This time I collapsed while at work on Saturday morning after an episode of severe vertigo and was carted off to hospital for the night. Do not panic. I am feeling fine and still hope to be here for many years delivering your MacDoctor [...]
On being asked his occupation, a pathologist friend of mine dryly answered, “I see dead people”. That’s the kind of humour you expect from doctors who think that naming disgusting, oozy pathology after their favorite meal is amusing. I would like to assume that same quirky humour was behind the remarks of Dr. Debra Graves, [...]
The following letter has been taken from the letters to the editor in this weeks New Zealand Doctor. Over the past year there has been a debate raging in the UK about getting rid of mixed sex wards. The Government is considering a financial penalty for hospitals that continue with mixed sex wards. It is [...]
I find it interesting that, with all the money being splashed around by governments in stimulus packages, the one part of our infrastructure that does not seem to be participating in this largesse is hospitals. Today, Kevin Rudd announced that he will be giving away $53 billion AUD for infrastructure and rescue packages, but I [...]
Poor Tony Ryall. He must be so disappointed. He told those naughty DHB people that they mustn’t make patients wait so long in Emergency Departments and it seems that waiting times are getting worse. Naughty, naughty DHBs. Why won’t they listen? Why are patients waiting so long? They are waiting for you, Tony They are [...]
Tony Ryall announced yesterday that the combined DHB deficits were worse than projected. This is not really much of a surprise. Labour attempted to quell the size of doctor’s and nurse’s pay claims by adding only enough in the DHB budget to account for a mediocre 3% pay rise. They must have known that would [...]
