Can you trust your doctor?

Maybe, like me, you missed this investigative programme on Channel 4 last week. If so, you may like to view it here, as I have done tonight. "GPs are among the most trusted and respected of all professions. They are our first port of call for most NHS treatment with 800,000 people visiting surgeries every day. But Dispatches reveals that failing doctors routinely slip through the system."

The programme shows very clearly that many GPs lack basic diagnostic competence, even with potentially very serious conditions like bowel cancer, breast cancer and angina. Although they are very highly paid and are accorded high status in our country, there are examples of doctors not following diagnostic guidelines in cases in which prompt diagnosis can mean the difference between life and premature death. Britain has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in Europe.

Even when two health professionals, a practice nurse and a doctor, turned whistleblowers about a GP who had fallen well behind with important patient results - blood tests and the like - the PCT (Primary Care Trust) concerned did not properly inform the patients concerned. The PCT's concern was clearly not patient safety.

Nor was the GMC's concern patient safety. (The GMC is the General Medical Council.) But then when is patient safety ever the GMC's concern? Regular readers of this blog will know that the GMC is a worse-than-useless 'regulator' and that in my opinion we would be better served by abolishing it than by attempting to reform such a travesty of a regulator. I think Trading Standards or Consumer Protection would be more appropriate, since these bodies have some concern for public safety, while the GMC is only concerned about the safety of doctors. If you click on the label GMC beneath this post, you will hopefully find on your screen a clutch of blogposts I have written over the years disparaging the GMC.

However serious the incidents of professional negligence, however many patients suffer and die before their time because of lousy doctors, nothing ever improves. I sometimes think of this as the proud motto of the NHS: We will never willingly improve. - Why don't you try to get something done about our flawed healthcare system and what is, effectively, the unaccountability of doctors? - After all, you, or someone you love, could be the next victim...

Overprescribing of powerful painkillers soars in UK, leading to addiction and to death by overdose

The Independent has a report on massive overprescribing of powerful painkillers by UK GPs, leading to addiction and to death by overdose among their unfortunate patients. It is, or ought to be, well-known by doctors that chronic pain is often unresponsive to painkillers. When patients return for more and more pills in order to take a higher dose it should be obvious that the pills are not working and should be gradually discontinued. - A safe, non-drug way to reduce chronic pain is to lower sodium intake, i.e. eat less salt and salty food.

Aqueous cream should never have been prescribed as a moisturiser. It is a soap alternative which contains emollients. Why didn't doctors know this?

Aqueous cream aggravates eczema. When used as a moisturiser it thins the skin and makes it more vulnerable to irritation. Read this BBC News report, where you will see that "it is also frequently recommended by doctors for its moisturising properties - one recent poll suggested nine out of 10 GPs recommended it for childhood eczema."

How on earth can UK doctors - reputedly the highest paid GPs in Europe - not know this? How can 9 out of 10 doctors have been recommending it for childhood eczema when it makes the condition worse? It contains sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS), a harmful chemical if left on the skin.

If you have had it prescribed or recommended for your child you may like to print out the BBC article and take it to show your doctor. This would surely not only help your own child but other children currently being damaged by the use of aqueous cream as a moisturiser.

We should pay heed to the words of Katherine Murphy, Director of the Patients Association

In this Telegraph article we read that "Two of the bosses of the company at the centre of the out-of-hours GP scandal have gone on to other jobs running similar patient services for the NHS." These two bosses are GPs. You will remember that Andrew Lansley, Secretary of State for Ill-Health, who infamously refuses to ban the addition of transfats to food products, despite NICE's recommendation to do so and save up to 7,000 premature deaths a year, is planning to put £billions into the money-grubbing hands of entrepreneurial doctors like this pair.

Extract from the article:

"Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: "It never ceases to amaze me that people can move from one senior post to another without having to justify their failures or be held to account.

"It is appalling that these individuals are involved in out-of-hours again. Where is the accountability and what message does that send to patients and the taxpayer?"

She added that it 'raises many issues' about the government's NHS reforms and plans to put GPs in charge of commissioning care.

Ms Murphy said: "I wonder if the Secretary of State [is] reconsidering some of his plans for GP commissioning now.""

Irresponsible prescribing of diazepam/Valium is again on the rise in UK

The Sunday Telegraph reports that prescriptions for diazepam aka Valium are rising dramatically. The benzodiazepine family of drugs, which includes Valium, are extremely addictive yet were heavily over-prescribed in the 1970s, and have destroyed the lives of millions of people, mainly women. Were it not for Esther Rantzen and her investigative television programme “That’s Life” this horrifying damage to innocent people would have continued to escalate, as the drug companies assured their medical dupes that the dreadful symptoms their patients were suffering were not caused by the drugs, but by the putative underlying illness. See the article in The Independent of 31 October 2009 where we read that:

"In 1980, an item on Esther Rantzen’s BBC TV programme “That’s Life” detailing the difficulty some people had withrawing from Valium, provoked the biggest response in the programme’s history, exposing a problem on a huge scale that had gone unnoticed by doctors. GPs had until then assumed, when patients complained of symptoms of withdrawal, that this was the anxiety returning - and prescribed more drugs. “That’s life” was later celebrated as the TV programme that changed the course of medicine.

In 1988, doctors were warned by the Committee on Safety of Medicines that prescriptions for the benzodiazepines should be limited to a maximum of four weeks . The warning was re-iterated by Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government’s Chief Medical Officer in 2004."

That irresponsible GPs are adding to the already huge numbers of innocent victims of these harmful drugs is hard to credit. Their freedom to prescribe these drugs should be curbed by Law and there should be severe sanctions against any further flouting of the guidelines about it.

In my informed opinion, prescription drugs cause most of the avoidable illness and disability in the UK and in the USA.

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

NHS GPs are reporting very few of the many thousands of errors they make in treating and diagnosing patients.

GPs are reporting very few of the many thousands of errors they make in treating and diagnosing patients. See Telegraph article. To be honest, I'm very surprised to read that they report any. The GPs who have so badly harmed me have certainly never reported those mistakes. Nor has any other health professional who has harmed me. And I've never personally heard of any healthcare worker reporting their mistakes to anyone. That's one of the reasons they never learn from their mistakes of course.

GPs are being warned yet again to prescribe fewer antibiotics.

BBC News reports that GPs are once again being warned to prescribe fewer antibiotics. "The European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control has warned if trends continue it will make it harder for hospitals to carry out operations. The UK has seen rates of antibiotic resistance rise in recent years. For example, rates of E. coli infections showing signs of resistance have trebled to 12% since the turn of the century."

The phenomenon of diseases becoming resistant to the drugs used to fight them has been known since the 1950s. (See this interesting library archived report Crofton J. The MRC randomized trial of streptomycin and its legacy) Despite this, GPs have routinely, recklessly and unashamedly continued to over-prescribe antibiotics, in many cases quite inappropriately, thereby compromising the recovery chances of very ill patients, their usual excuse being that the patient insisted on having antibiotics.

We need sanctions to be taken against these doctors who are putting so many people's lives and health at risk. - Sanctions would be more effective than a 'warning'.

British doctors are woefully ill-informed about symptoms of ovarian cancer

BBC News reports that ovarian cancer is being 'missed': that far from being a 'silent killer' as it is frequently described, it has several serious symptoms, including abdominal distension and vaginal bleeding, but doctors are not investigating these symptoms.

The report informs us that around 6,800 women are diagnosed with the cancer each year. Only 30% are alive five years after diagnosis, and the survival rate has not improved in 30 years.

Annwen Jones, Chief Executive of the charity Target Ovarian Cancer, says, "The UK's high rates of late diagnosis have played an important part in keeping five year survival rates low, at just 30% - amongst the lowest in the Western World."

I agree with Annwen Jones that change is long overdue. I know of someone who experienced extreme abdominal distension years ago - so much so that people she knew were asking her whether she was pregnant - and was very, very tired and in great pain. She was also bleeding heavily. She presented with these symptoms repeatedly over a space of about 18 months at her GP's and was patronisingly told that these symptoms were perfectly normal for middle-aged women! - This was someone who did not go to see a doctor with trivial complaints, yet she was treated in this dismissive, disgusting way. - She was so tired that she could no longer go to work and had to give in her notice! - Now THAT is not normal for middle-aged women and it is ridiculous and contemptible that a doctor should should insult an exhausted, gravely ill woman in that way.

It was not until she was close to death that the GP actually realised that she was ill and rang to arrange for her to go into hospital. He then told her to 'toddle along home and wait for the ambulance!' - She could not manage to walk more than a few steps along his drive and collapsed, and the receptionist rushed out to her and summoned the ambulance urgently. By the time she reached the hospital she no longer even knew her name and was very dangerously short of blood. She had to be given a blood transfusion urgently and also needed a hysterectomy, because the ovarian cancer had by this time become disseminated throughout the abdominal cavity. There was no way she could possibly recover and she died in agonising pain a few weeks later, another victim of medical negligence, so common in our lousy NHS.

I was reading online today that the NHS is so good that even the Royal Family go into NHS hospitals for treatment. - Yes, of course they do! - But they wouldn't be left to bleed heavily for 18 months first, or be insulted and not be examined till they were dying, would they? - We all - taxpayers - pay for the NHS. We don't all get good treatment. The more important you are, the better the treatment you get.

Britain's doctors should be told to take women's symptoms seriously. When a woman complains of heavy bleeding, she is not complaining because she doesn't like having menstrual periods; she is reporting serious blood loss/haemorrhage, and she should be properly examined and sent to a specialist to find the cause of the bleeding. - Heavy bleeding is not caused by being middle-aged!

SSRI antidepressants taken in early pregnancy linked to birth defects in the babies

The Guardian reports that there is a link between women taking certain anti-depressants in the early weeks of pregnancy and birth defects in a small proportion of the babies born to the women.

These SSRI antidepressants include Prozac and Seroxat aka Paxil. Doctors have been warned against prescribing these drugs to pregnant women by the FDA, by the MHRA (UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority) and by NICE, nonetheless British GPs have prescibed these pills to pregnant women and other women of childbearing age without warning of the potential dangers. (Seroxat is made by GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug company.)

I urge you to read the whole of the Guardian article. Clearly there have been grave faults by the doctors and by the drug companies. In my opinion, so many drugs are teratogenic (i.e. able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus) that drugs should be completely avoided during pregnancy unless there is a very good reason for them.

Actually there is no good reason to prescribe anti-depressants to anyone. - See Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' about research by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch. Not very often doctors seek to reduce pill-taking! - I fervently hope this will save a lot of people having their lives/health damaged by these harmful, useless drugs.

As far as depression goes, a major cause of 'depression' is inadequate nutrition or dieting. Many women attempt to diet, especially during pregnancy, as they fear gaining a lot of weight because of the pregnancy. Dieting by pregnant women should be actively discouraged. It is harmful for both the woman and for the unborn baby. Weight gain is not caused by eating too many calories or not taking enough exercise. It is caused by fluid retention/sodium retention/salt sensitivity and is preventable by minimising salt intake and avoiding salty food.
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers
Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions
and FAT RETENTION

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations.

Many older people are being prescribed medications unnecessarily and without sufficient consideration of adverse side-effects.

Elderly people are being turned into patients by GPs blindly following guidelines to hand out pills for high blood pressure and cholesterol, a professor has said. The ‘paternalistic society’ and medicine by ‘tick box’ has overtaken personal advice, Michael Oliver, emeritus professor of cardiology at Edinburgh University wrote in the British Medical Journal online. He said many of the drugs including those for high blood pressure and statins for raised cholesterol have side effects which many elderly people find debilitating.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

If you have diabetes and you live in the UK I believe you would find this of interest:

Are the financial incentives given to UK doctors regarding diabetes doing more harm than good?
Blog entry on Dr John Briffa's blog.

Extracts:

"From April of this year, if GPs can get half of their type 2 diabetic patients to have a HbA1c level (this is a measure of blood sugar control over the preceding 3 months or so) of less than 7 per cent, then the practice gets an additional payment of £3000 ($4250). Prior to this, the target set by the government was 7.5 per cent. Clearly, the government feels that when it comes to HbA1c levels, lower is better."

"It seems that not only is the UK government’s recent move to lower the HbA1c targets for GPs not particularly evidence-based, there is a risk it might actually do more harm than good. The authors of the BMJ piece use some good old-fashioned plain-speak to conclude their piece by stating: “The change of target from 7.5% to 7% should be withdrawn before it wastes resources and possibly harms patients.”"

Increasingly it seems to me that the government favours more and more drug treatment for long-term health problems. This appears to be treating symptoms instead of attacking causes of ill-health. I favour improving diet rather than the ever-increasing prescribing of powerful drugs with all their potential for adverse side-effects.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

GPs who favour some patients over others could face disciplinary action or even law suits, medical legal experts have warned.

Don't favour some patients over others, GPs told
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland (MDDUS) which has members around the country has warned GPs against showing favouritism.

Dr George Fernie, a senior medico-legal adviser at the MDDUS, said: "GPs understandably warm to certain patients more than others, but giving them favoured status by offering them better clinical care or some other kind of preferential treatment carries risks.

"Favouritism is unfair, potentially illegal – and poor professional practice.""

Half of all nursing home residents in Britain are being wrongly drugged, a new study suggests, twice as many as previously thought.

Half of nursing home residents wrongly drugged, study shows
Article in the Telegraph

Extracts:

"Experts who looked at 22 nursing homes found 51 per cent of residents were being inappropriately given drugs, including anti-psychotics, antidepressants and painkillers."

"Paul Burstow, the Liberal Democrat MP, said: “This adds to the growing evidence that inappropriate medicating in care homes is much more routine in practice than we would like to believe.

“And when it comes to the prescribing of anti-psychotics, these drugs are actually killing people. The Government must come up with concrete proposals to crack down on this problem.”

Mr Burstow has previously called for GPs who overprescribe to patients in homes to face prosecution.

The use of anti-psychotics has become increasingly controversial in recent years after they were linked to strokes. A report released last year suggested that the drugs could be responsible for more than 23,000 deaths in care homes every year."

Why is it OK for doctors and co. to be allowed to harm elderly people with impunity? - It would only need one or two of them to be prosecuted for bodily harm or whatever is the appropriate charge, and one or two of them going to prison if found guilty, and this scandalous, cruel abuse of power would stop.

British people are taking more and more drugs prescribed by their GPs.

In the past decade, prescribing by GPs has risen more than 50 per cent.
Read article in The Independent (UK)

Prescription drugs are a major factor in Britain's growing obesity problem. - Many prescription drugs, especially steroids, HRT, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, cause sodium and water retention, i.e. fluid retention, i.e. weight gain. - This weight gain could be avoided/minimised if doctors were clued-up about the side-effects and warned patients that when taking these drugs they must avoid eating salt and salty food. - But they don't realise the warning is necessary/vitally important, and so they don't give it. - They then blame their patient/victim who gains weight, telling them that they are eating too much and/or not taking enough exercise.

GPs' reckless over-prescribing should be curbed BY LAW! - They are destroying the nation's health with this pharmaceutical overload.

See vulnerable groups

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, angina, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Thousands of patients are at risk because skin cancers are not removed properly by GPs, according to a new report.

GPs leave skin cancer patients at risk
Article in the Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Potentially lethal cancers can continue to spread because parts of the tumours are left in half of cases, researchers believe.

The findings follow a government drive for more skin cancer patients to be treated outside hospitals. Of more than 100,000 operations conducted in the NHS each year, an estimated fifth are now carried out by GPs.

The report, compiled by the British Association of Dermatologists, found that guidelines by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence were frequently ignored."

Hospitals across the country are helping to fuel the rise of superbugs like MRSA and C Difficile by overprescribing antibiotics.

Hospital antibiotics 'fuelling superbugs'

Extract from the Telegraph:

"GPs are already being urged not to hand out the drugs for coughs and colds but many hospital doctors also overuse the medication, Prof Mark Wilcox, of Leeds University, said.

Prof Wilcox, an expert on the control of hospital acquired infections, will tell a conference on intensive care medicine in London next week that part of the problem is that the health service does not know what antibiotics hospitals prescribe."

Pharmageddon: the prescription pill epidemic

Pharmageddon: the prescription pill epidemic - Independent on Sunday

An interesting and timely article about the harm that doctors and their recklessly profligate prescribing habits are having on the health of individuals and on the finances of the NHS.

Extract:

"Britain is in the grip of a prescription drug-taking epidemic, with unprecedented numbers of medicines being handed out by GPs, costing billions of pounds and stretching already tight NHS resources to breaking point.

Prescription drug use has increased by 27 per cent in the past the five years and the NHS drug bill topped £10bn in 2006. GPs prescribed 918 million medicines last year compared with 721 million five years ago, according to figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday.

Health experts put rocketing prescription numbers down to medical advances, but also point to poor prescribing by GPs, growing public demand for a "pill for every ill" and aggressive marketing tactics by the pharmaceutical industry, which prompted one MP to warn that the UK is heading towards what he called "pharmageddon".

Paul Flynn, the Labour MP, warned that a failure to change attitudes would be disastrous. He said: "We are heading towards pharmageddon. The medicalising of society is convincing people they need a pill for everything. Drug companies recruit patients, particularly good-looking and articulate ones, to help promote new drugs in the media. Life and death decisions should not be taken by tabloids."

Doctors now write an average of 81 prescriptions a day compared with 64 five years ago. More than 730,000 prescriptions for antidepressants are being handed out each week, to the point where they almost match those for antibiotics at 870,000 a week.

More than £1bn has been wasted in the past five years on buying and disposing of drugs that were never used by patients, according to new research by the Conservative Party. GPs prescribe thousands of drugs patients don't want or take, according to this survey."


Lose weight and improve your health without drugs or expense by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Antibiotics are being over-prescribed again...

Take now, pay later - Guardian

Extract:

"Recent research led by Dr Andrew Hayward, a senior lecturer in infectious disease epidemiology at University College London, found that, despite official guidelines, GPs are prescribing too many antibiotics for common infections. His survey, published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, showed that antibiotic prescription varied widely according to the condition, with 44% of upper respiratory tract infections (coughs and colds), 64% of sore throats over 80% of chest infections and sinusitis receiving prescriptions for antibiotics.

"The majority of simple coughs, colds and sore throats are viral, and those that are bacterial only benefit a little from antibiotics because they will get better anyway. GPs are prescribing more antibiotics than necessary for these conditions," Hayward says."


Lose weight and improve your health by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! - How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

NHS managers blocked 75pc of GP referrals - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Three quarters of GPs who referred patients to hospital have had their decisions blocked, a poll for The Sunday Telegraph reveals.

Family doctors say that new "referral management" systems, set up to allow primary care trusts (PCTs) to overrule decisions taken in the surgery, are being used to delay and cancel hospital care, and to divert patients referred to a hospital consultant to cheaper clinics in the community.

Other schemes run by PCTs have offered GPs payments if they reduce the number of patients sent to hospital.

Of 750 doctors polled across Britain, 75 per cent said they had referred patients to hospital only to have their decision overruled, with 40 per cent saying that it happened regularly. Dr Laurence Buckman, the chairman of the British Medical Association's GP committee, himself a London family doctor, said such schemes were a short-sighted attempt to save money by delaying hospital care."

Huge amounts of money would be saved, and health improved, if the correct advice were to be given about how overweight or obese people can lose weight. - See below:


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and Associated health conditions

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.