Ploughing through General Turkey Council Fitness to Practice data with a tractor ever more bogged down in numerical mud, Dr No got distracted by another question: what do ‘erased’ – the chilling term used by the GTC in place of the plebeian ‘struck off’, chilling because where the plebeian leaves a name albeit with a line through it, erasure effects obliteration, total obliteration, for not even a name remains – doctors get erased for? In the past, one was encouraged to suppose it was the three As, alcohol, advertising and adultery, a supposition borne out by the General Medical Council’s, as it was then, 1965 ‘Blue Book’ guidance, which does indeed list the three As (alcohol comes under splendidly archaic ‘Offences Indicative of Tendencies Dangerous to Patients’ heading), along with other examples of ‘infamous conduct’ likely to bring a doctor to the Council’s attention. But over time, as two of the capital As have become, so to speak, of lower case severity, we might suppose that ‘gross neglect in diagnosis or treatment’, the 1965 heading for clinical failings, might have risen in prominence, such that today most doctors are struck off for substandard treatment. But what are the facts?
Author: dr-no
Council to Survey Turkeys about Christmas
For Immediate Release:
Council to Survey Turkeys about Christmas
GTC Press Office, London, UK
Thousands of turkeys are to be invited to take part in a survey of their views about Christmas, the General Turkey Council has announced.
The survey is part of a new piece of research examining whether turkeys think the GTC is operating in a fair and objective way and whether turkeys from different backgrounds have different views of the Council’s processes.
Dropping Like Flies
The Inquisition known for the time being as the General Medical Council is under fire. Its fitness to practice procedures, which for doctors caught on the sharp end of one of Stilton’s prongs feel much like being popped into a beaker of dilute sulphuric acid with a rack of Bunsen burners arrayed underneath, have come under scrutiny because of an apparently high mortality attached to being left to simmer in warm sulphuric acid. Figures available online suggest that there were at least 92 deaths between 2004 and 2012 in doctors under investigation. The denominator – which Dr No suggests should be the number of GMC cases referred to panel investigations – stands somewhere in the region of 2300 (see footnote), giving an approximate average annual mortality rate of 4%. Working age (25-64) mortality in the same period was around 200 per 100,000, or 0.2%. Something is clearly going on. If we apply some crude ‘observed over expected’ numerology to these figures, we get a (very) crude mortality ratio, on the normal 100 base, of around 2000: that is, where we would expect 100 deaths, we find 2000.
Snucking Up to Uncle Sam
While Dr No has been away frying other fish, it seems the Tories have been sneaking a few of their own right old brown trouts through the S bends and P traps of US/EU trade negotiations. Like those in the wild, these fish are well camouflaged. Against a backdrop of general do-goodery – free trade, liberalisation of markets, and boosting of GDPs – there is some serious mumbo-jumbo about the steps needed to break down barriers to trade not just in goods, but services. The scope is grand: all sectors are covered unless specifically excluded. No longer will Detroit be able to give das auto da boot; nor will M. ’Ollandaise be able to stop Hollywood setting up Frollywood on the French Riviera – unless exclusions are granted. But here’s the thing: while other governments are geeing up to protect their important sectors, our Tory led government is eerily silent on excluding what is arguably today our biggest and most defining sector: the NHS.
Regulators are from Mars, Doctors are from Venus
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a regulator in possession of a dodgy report must be in want of a cover-up.
–Attr: Austen, Miss J.
Yesterday on Newsnight, the Chief Stoat was worrying another victim, on this occasion the Chief Pongo for the time being at Can’t Quite Cope, the body charged for the time being with keeping an eye on the quality of health and social care in England. The story is that CQC had given a certain NHS Trust a green light when it should have flashed a red. On finding the error, senior staff at CQC ordered all lights off, all shredders on, and folk who should have known better started wall-papering their arses. But wall-paper is no match for the brown stuff. As the skid marks appeared, the CQC leadership panicked, turned to its lawyers, and received the extraordinary advice to hide behind the Data Protection Act. It was the absurdity of this advice, not to mention that it was followed, that caused Paxo’s eyes to enlarge in visible increments. Mr Behan, the Chief Pongo for the time being at CQC, responded for the time being by talking up his leadership, but the vigour his assertion was compromised by the fact he spent most of the interview looking like a goldfish about to lead the escape from a wet paper bag.
Crossed Lines
Now that Call 111 has gone live, Dr No has sent a team of his crack undercover reporters into 111 call centres to discover how the new service is working.
The following is a transcript of a secret recording made at a call centre located somewhere in the South of England.
A 111 call centre, with two operatives with headsets on at desks with computer screens. Op-A is taking a call from a patient; Op-B is taking a break; his screen has flashing betting odds on it. We overhear the conversations…
Op-B: I didn’t quite catch that. Did you say the 1:11 at Aintree?
Op-A: That’s right caller, 111 Braintree here, what’s troubling you today?
Op-B: Number 2, Hot To Trot, followed by Rimfire.
Toothless Wonder
Dr No gazed in open-mouthed if not toothless wonder as the first episode of Frankie (BBC1) unfolded last night. Not content to be the life and soul of the party, Frankie, a SuperNurse for the time being on the district beat, is the life and soul of the known universe. In a script that pasted it on like a bricklayer mortaring a wall, Frankie was given lines to assist even the dimmest viewer to a full comprehension of Frankie’s awesome powers. When cutbacks have ordinary doctors and nurses quivering, what does Frankie do? Why, she laughs at the cuts! When a cut of a literal sort threatens to come her way in the hands of a demented war veteran, she turns the other cheek. Nothing is beyond the toothless wonder’s extraordinary powers. When a child arrests in her car, Frankie becomes paramedic and then emergency ambulance driver; later, she turns her hand to a spot of midwifery. Dr No suspects Frankie has a fold-up operating theatre in the boot of her car, and in later episodes will turn her hand to a spot of surgery. Nothing is beyond Frankie for, as she told at least one gagging viewer, ‘the world is her patient’. When not fixing the world, Frankie likes to turn up the stereo, and dance, turning the show into a musical: Frankie Goes To Bollywood. Truly, nothing is beyond Frankie, but then, Dr No supposes, that is what happens when you have done Torchwood. Even Captain Jack has been turned into a shadow of his former self, a hapless plod who’s always got the wood, but never gets his way, because every time he gets his pecker out, Frankie’s away.
The Baby and the Bath Water
The night before last, the Section 75 Regulations slipped through The Lords like a U-boat, silent and deep. A limpet mine attached to the hull by one Lord Hunt failed to go off, and the boat got through unscathed. The crew even found time to loose off a few tin fish at 38 Degrees, but, on the whole, anyone watching the surface of events would have seen nothing remarkable. Certainly the BBC saw nothing remarkable, and reported nothing. The recent Reynolds analogy, that if the Health and Social Care Act was an aeroplane, then the regulations were the engines that would enable it to fly, failed to take off, leaving no scope for engines on fire, or jumbo-jets falling out of the sky. The health service revolution said to be so large it can be seen from space is all but invisible on earth. There has been no bang, not even a whimper, just the night time passage, silent and deep, of some regulations through the Lords. Nothing has changed – except that the U-boat is now on the inside, torpedoes armed and periscope at the ready. The lumbering ships of the health service convoy still steam across the healthcare seas, unaware of the peril that now lurks in the deeps.
Pax Pemberton
Dr Max Pemberton – Apology
GMC Statement – For Immediate Release
22 Apr 2013
Earlier this morning, Count Rubin (not his real name) appeared on the Today programme opposite Dr Max Pemberton (not his real name), defending the General Medical Council’s decision to implement new guidance requiring doctors who use social media to reveal their identities.
By appearing alongside Dr Pemberton, and not challenging Dr Pemberton’s identity, Count Rubin gave the impression that the Council knew who the real Dr Pemberton was, had got his number, and furthermore the Council knew where he lived.
Deathiquette
One of the more noisome phrases in the air today is ‘one should not speak ill of the dead’. The sentiment, both spoken and unspoken, is everywhere, and the dead we should not speak ill of is of course Mrs Hacksaw, the Iron Lady who famously decreed and then ensured ‘there is no such thing as society’. But we shall not speak ill of the dead. Labour leaders stand as pupils before Miss Jean Brodie, the better not to speak ill of the dead. In the Today coven, Humph and Jimbo cackle away at each other, reminiscing about conviction politicians. No, we shall not speak ill of the dead, oh no. April is the cruellest month. Mistress Thatch – she dead! wail the hollow men, heads filled with deathiquette. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. And yet, between the desire and the spasm, between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent, falls the shadow. But we shall not speak of the shadow, oh no: de mortuis nihil nisi bonum.