Do you think a Burglars' Protection Society would be a good idea?

Do you think a Burglars' Protection Society would be a good idea? - I'll explain what I mean: a Burglars' Protection Society would offer insurance to burglars so that if they got arrested for burgling, the insurance would pay the legal fees for their defence, enabling them to have top, highly-paid lawyers working for them, particularly skilled and experienced in all the ins and outs of winning such cases. And there would be inhouse salaried lawyers constantly on hand for legal advice. As well as this, the insurance would also cover any fine the Court imposed and would cover any damages awarded to the burglars' victims in a civil court action. The burglars would pay a yearly subscription of course.

Well I'm pretty confident that you can see many flaws in the idea of a Burglars' Protection Society and that you find the very idea ridiculous, and I'd agree with you about this. - But stay with me for a while because I have been setting up an analogy to put before you. - I suggest there are parallels to be drawn between the hypothetical Burglars' Protection Society and the actual medical protection societies that offer legal protection to physicians and surgeons.

Doctors pay subscriptions to their various Medical Protection Societies and in return receive ongoing top notch legal advice, and in the event of being sued in a civil action for professional negligence or arrested for criminal negligence and appearing in a criminal court, they have the very sharpest, most experienced defence lawyers money can buy. In the distinctly rare instances in which the court has the courage to find them guilty and fines them an amount of money or orders them to pay damages/compensation to their victim/s, this money too would come out of their insurance.

Now the main reason you and I find the idea of a Burglars' Protection Society ridiculous is that it would obviously result in many more burglaries, many more innocent citizens suffering loss and damage to their possessions and damage to their mental, emotional and financial well-being (and sometimes their physical well-being too), because with the insurance paying the burglars' penalties, there is less deterrent to burgling. - I invite you to see the same flaw with medical protection societies' insurance, i.e. when the doctor is found guilty, the monetary fine or the damages/compensation comes out of the well-filled coffers of the insurance company, and not out of the pocket or bank account of the negligent doctor. - So there is very little to deter doctors from being negligent. - Indeed there is so little to deter medical negligence that it is constantly on the increase.

Whoever thought up the nifty idea of medics insuring themselves against any effective deterrents to incompetence or negligence, you can be sure it wasn't a patient! The insurance is, I believe, 'justified' by explaining that it is in order to guarantee that the victims will receive any damages the courts may decide upon, but, as people who use their brains, you and I both know that this is not the case, don't we? - And wouldn't we all rather reduce the chance of being harmed by doctors' incompetence/negligence/malpractice than increase the chance of being awarded some money if and when we do indeed get harmed by them?

Also note that while the worst effect a guilty verdict would have on a doctor's wallet might be an increase in insurance premiums, by contrast, the doctor's victims are soon to be denied any scrap of legal aid (as well as no help from the Complaints Procedures).

Disgraceful 'legitimisation' of NHS cover-ups of medical errors

See Telegraph report. "Peter Walsh, chief executive of AvMA, said: “It is nothing short of a national disgrace that the Government have pushed through these controversial measures."

(AvMA is the patient safety charity Action against Medical Accidents. See http://www.avma.org.uk/)

The routine cover-ups/whitewashes/blatant lies of the NHS and the medical profession, with regard to medical mistakes and negligence, and the terrible futility of the NHS Complaints Procedures, are, of course, the main reasons for the shamefully high incidence of serious patient safety incidents and horrifying hospital scandals.

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.

NHS tolerance of sheer carelessness over patient care leads to high incidence of medical errors/negligence and unnecessary suffering for patients

The Sunday Telegraph reports on "a catalogue of medical mistakes".

The reported blunders are just the tip of the iceberg. Most 'untoward incidents' are covered up or never reported and it is rare for those responsible actually to be held accountable in any meaningful way. When there is a lack of accountability and sanctions there is of course little incentive for the carelessness and negligence to be reduced.

NHS tolerance of sheer carelessness over patient care leads to high incidence of medical errors/negligence, unnecessary suffering for patients and high costs in compensation claims.

Remember those sentences we are encouraged to associate with doctors and with the NHS?

1. First do no harm.
2. The NHS is the envy of the world.

Neither has ever been true.

All hospitals should be adhering to the rules on reporting the disciplining of doctors.

freep.com article reports that not all hospitals are reporting doctors who are subject to disciplinary measures, even when doctors are the subject of more than two disciplinary actions.

The report and recommendations are at www.citizen.org. Contact PATRICIA ANSTETT: 313-222-5021 or panstett@freepress.com

Faults are much more likely to be remedied when they have the light of scrutiny focussed on them.

The Telegraph reports that a fifth of patients in intensive care are subjected to errors with their medication, according to a study.

Patients in intensive care suffer frequent medicine errors, research finds
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The most frequent mistakes were giving medication at the wrong time, followed by missed doses and administering the wrong dose.

The research involved 113 intensive care units in 27 countries, including the UK.

The team examined errors made with medicines in a 24-hour snapshot.

Of the 1,328 patients in the study, 861 medicine errors affected 441 patients. Seven patients experienced permanent harm as a result of the errors while five died as a direct result.

However the authors warned that because the reports of errors was voluntary it is likely to reflect an underestimate of the real scale of the problem.

The data, published in the British Medical Journal online, showed that heavy workload, stress and general tiredness among staff contributed to a third of all errors."

I can't help thinking that if fewer drugs were prescribed there would be less risk of error.

Thirty patients are suing Barnsley hospital claiming that a consultant botched their breast surgery operations.

Surgery patients sue hospital
This is a BBC News webpage.

There is a video interview with one of the victims of the consultant's poor surgery. She has had to have repeated surgery and still requires reconstructive surgery. She has lost her job and is living on Incapacity Benefit.

That as many as thirty patients are involved in this inclines me to think that their complaints were not being taken seriously until the numbers became too big to continue to ignore.

Diabetes sufferers warned aspirin increases bleeding risk.

Diabetes sufferers warned aspirin increases bleeding risk
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Many diabetics take the drug to thin the blood and reduce the risk of suffering a heart attack, the main cause of death from the disease.

But a new study suggests that taking the medication could be doing more harm than good.

Scientists have shown that aspirin does not cut the risk of a heart attack for even high-risk diabetics, unless they previously suffer from heart disease.

But the drug is known to increase the risk of bleeding in the gut.

Scientists at the University of Dundee gave 1,276 diabetics aspirin, an antioxidant or a placebo, and followed their progress over eight years.

They found that neither the aspirin or the antioxidant reduced the risk of suffering a heart attack, even in the groups at high risk.

Professor Jill Belch, who led the study, published on BMJ.com, the website of the British Medical Journal, said that aspirin should be given only to patients who have already been diagnosed with heart disease or suffered a stroke."

It has long been known that aspirin increases the risk of bleeding in the gut. I remember in 1994 when I had a major operation, the surgeon who did the operation warned me to avoid aspirin because I tend to bleed easily, so it was certainly well known all those years ago. - This new research is unambiguous - that aspirin does not reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke, even in groups at high risk, unless the patients have already been diagnosed with heart disease or suffered a stroke. - Why then have people been advised for years that low-dose daily aspirin lowers the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke? - There cannot have been evidence to support the advice because this research shows that the advice was WRONG. - Obviously THE ADVICE WAS GUESSWORK ON THE PART OF SOMEONE IN THE MEDICAL PROFESSION...)o: - GUESSWORK THAT MUST HAVE HARMED MANY PATIENTS OVER THE YEARS...)o:

Like the guesswork that was responsible for mothers being advised to lay their babies on their tummies to go to sleep although there was no evidence to support the idea that this was the safest way for babies to sleep. - After Anne Diamond, the former TV presenter, tragically lost a baby to cot death, she instigated research into this and the research showed that this position could cause cot death and that the safest position for a baby to sleep is on its back, and now mothers are given the right advice - "BACK TO SLEEP!"

Anne Diamond's response to her personal tragedy has resulted in babies being safer when sleeping in their cots and she must have saved many families from the grief of avoidable cot deaths.

DOCTORS SHOULD NOT BE GIVING ADVICE THAT IS PURELY GUESSWORK, WHILE IMPLYING THAT THERE IS RELIABLE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT WHAT THEY SAY.

THE MAIN AND MOST IMPORTANT GUESSWORK THEY MADE DECADES AGO AND HAVE STILL NEVER BOTHERED TO TEST FOR ACCURACY - BECAUSE IN THEIR ARROGANCE THEY DECIDED THEY MUST BE RIGHT AND THERE WAS NO NEED TO CHECK - IS THE HIGHLY DANGEROUS AND EXTREMELY HARMFUL ADVICE TO OVERWEIGHT AND OBESE PEOPLE THAT TO LOSE WEIGHT THEY MUST EAT LESS FOOD/FEWER CALORIES/LESS FAT. - THIS ADVICE IS UNTESTED, UNSUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE AND CATEGORICALLY IT DOES NOT WORK!

I wonder which patients, rich enough to go to law, brave enough to take on the over-powerful medical profession, and not too ill and exhausted to cope with the Law's delay and obfuscation, will be the first to sue the members of the medical profession who have done them so much harm with their damaging, useless advice and insults?

Overweight and obesity are caused by fluid retention, and occur only in people who are sensitive to salt/sodium. - To lose excess weight it is necessary to cut down on salt and salty food. - So instead of eating a ready meal you need to cook a meal from fresh ingredients and use little or no salt to flavour it. - You could try using pepper or herbs instead of salt, or if you feel you cannot yet give up salt, then use a little of one of the low sodium salt substitutes, e.g. LoSalt, Solo Low Sodium Sea Salt or AlsoSalt, instead of ordinary salt.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, dieting, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

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

If you need my help, I can be contacted from my website. - My help is free.

Here's a rare thing: an honest doctor who admits to mistakes! - Atul Gawande

You can't get it right every time - Guardian

Extract:

""Most of the time, they are patients whom I think I've done all I possibly could for, so I can accept it. But there are always the others. Six months ago, I was performing a thyroid operation on a teacher my age and damaged a nerve that led to her vocal cords. This woman can no longer talk and has had to give up work. The only way I can live with myself is to try to do all I can for her and understand what I did wrong and do better next time. Being sorry is not enough."

Gawande is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. And he still makes mistakes. It's this uncomfortable wound that he has opened up, first in Complications - his bestselling book that was shortlisted for the National Book prize in the US and became the inspiration for the TV series Grey's Anatomy - and now in his follow-up, Better.

"What I'm interested in is failure," he says, "as it's the one area of medicine with which the professionals are often reluctant to engage because the stakes we are playing for are so high. We can fail by putting a decimal point in the wrong place and by not asking the right questions. If you ask any doctor when he or she last made a misdiagnosis, the truthful answer would always be in the last month. We get things wrong and we try to put them right. And, of course, we can fail with a slip of the hand. I once performed an emergency trachaeotomy in which I did everything wrong. I had the wrong knife, the wrong lights and I made the wrong incision. There was blood everywhere and the patient would have died if a colleague hadn't stepped in to help. It was horrific."

If his call for willingness to ruthlessly examine what goes wrong and why is not always shared by other doctors, then neither will be the second part of his prescription for demystifying failure. Mention league tables to most doctors and they start spitting blood, but Gawande is adamant that there is a value in open accountability. "You have to be careful you are comparing like with like," he says, by way of a caveat, "because otherwise the data can be meaningless. For instance, death rates for cardiac surgeons can vary hugely, depending on the age of their patients and the difficulty of the procedures they are undertaking. But we shouldn't allow this to disguise the fact that some surgeons and some hospitals get better results than others. And unless we are prepared to admit this, we'll never improve the overall success rates."

As an example, Gawande cites both the case of the paediatric team at a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, who virtually single-handedly raised the average life expectancy of cystic fibrosis patients from three years old in 1957 to 33 in 2003, simply by providing aggressive preventive treatment before sufferers became visibly sick from it. You could argue that such successes are largely a matter of money, but Gawande disagrees. "We spend huge amounts of cash on healthcare in the US," he says, "and not all of it is very effective. Infection rates in hospitals are proof of this. Some hospitals have spent a small fortune on portable $5,000 hand-washing machines [superbugs are as rife in America as they are in Britain], but their infection rates have remained as high as before.

"The one hospital in the US that has managed to reduce infection to almost zero did so not by spending money but by analysing procedures. They asked doctors and nurses how they used the system and found that the alcohol gel dispensers were in the wrong place, the gowns they needed for the 3pm ward rounds were in the wrong place and that it was better to have a single stethoscope designated for each patient's sole use than for a doctor to carry his own from patient to patient.""

It's heart-warming to read, "This woman can no longer talk and has had to give up work. The only way I can live with myself is to try to do all I can for her and understand what I did wrong and do better next time. Being sorry is not enough." - Sadly Atul Gawande is rare among doctors in having this moral attitude. - Victims of medical error are mostly abandoned by the health professionals who have harmed them. That is certainly the norm in Britain. - See http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/search/label/Andrea%20Carey and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/search/label/NHS%20Complaints
http://www.sin-medicalmistakes.org/
http://www.patientprotect.org/

I regard the failure of doctors to tell the truth about the causes of obesity as probably the most colossal group negligence in the history of medicine.

Obesity is not caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention in people who are vulnerable to salt. - See Mensa article about Obesity and the Salt Connection

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - 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.)

'New NHS rating website coming'

New NHS rating website coming

Extracts:

"Using the new site, the public will be able to express their opinions of individual doctors and hospitals."

"The spokesperson said: "The NHS does amazing things every day. "We want people to put down their views. Good or bad, we want an honest review of the services they have received.""

I think they'll have a hard job convincing people that they want to hear 'good or bad' of the NHS and that people who report bad treatment will not be 'punished' in some way! - From my personal experience, it is routine for patients damaged by the NHS to be treated abominably - victimised - even more so when they make a justified complaint - to be insulted, bullied, humiliated, accused of lying, refused appropriate investigations/treatment and to have their condition and their suffering trivialised... - I am not alone in this experience. I have been providing a free helpline for people harmed by NHS doctors/dentists for nearly 20 years and I have never heard of even one person for whom there was a satisfactory outcome from making a complaint! Despite much-vaunted 'medical ethics', doctors seem to regard victims of medical negligence not as damaged fellow human beings in need of help, but as adversaries or nuisances.

As a steroid victim (i.e. massively harmed by being inappropriately prescribed HRT in far too high a dose and inadequately monitored - for nearly ten years) I remain very ill and disabled and in great pain, but I have not been to see a G.P. since 1999. I would prefer to give them no further opportunity to harm me. Consulting them was an ordeal that only added to my health problems. - I'll add that I have never been other than courteous and reasonable in all my dealings with doctors and never registered a complaint about any of them, knowing how futile such complaints are in this country, and being too ill and exhausted to want to waste time and energy and experience further victimisation.

You can read about other people's experiences of the NHS (and the futility of complaining about the NHS) on Medical Mistakes and AvMA (click on 'Share experience' and then go to the forum pages) and Patient Protect. And my website is http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ (My website does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful and essential information which doctors do not give their patients.)

NHS blunders kill 200 a year - that they admit to...)o:

NHS blunders kill 200 a year

Extract

"More than 200 patients died last year as a result of mistakes made by hospital staff while another 1,800 were made worse during treatment, it has been revealed.

Some patients were given overdoses of radiation or had healthy organs removed in operations, while others died after being wrongly attached to medical equipment.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that 2,109 events which could injure patients, staff or public - known as serious untoward incidents - were reported to health authorities in 2006.

At least 221 resulted in avoidable deaths, including a 76-year-old man who had a feeding tube inserted into his lungs instead of his stomach and a pensioner who was given air instead of pure oxygen.

Hundreds more patients were made worse while in hospital because of wrong diagnoses or mistakes in treatment, such as a woman who had chemotherapy and surgery for ovarian cancer when she never had the disease."

There is absolutely no doubt that the real numbers of people who lost their health, or even their lives, will be far, far, far higher than given in this report.

And what about the thousands of patients who lose their lives because hospital staff don't wash their hands between dealing with patients, thus spreading MRSA, with its devastating consequences? See thousands of hospital staff fail to

I have written many times (see other entries in this blog and see also my website) of the many thousands of patients greatly harmed and suffering early death because of cavalier prescribing of drugs that cause sodium and water retention and poor or non-existent monitoring of patients on these drugs, and because of the counter-productive, incorrect and harmful advice to lose weight by eating fewer calories. instead of recognising that obesity is caused by fluid retention, which can usually be considerably reduced by reducing salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.

No record at all is kept of the numbers of steroid victims and other victims of this negligent prescribing which results in morbid obesity - unless the warning about sodium retention is given!

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)