effectiveness – Dr Rod’s Odd Blog (almondemotion)

daydream believer, this can’t be a second-wave; i haven’t had my summer holiday yet.

And, yes, those bureaucrats, the apparatchiks who felt things were returning to normal will be once again on the back-foot and find themselves redundant, scraping the earth with their over-long arms, their Neanderthal gait giving it all away.

Manor Field Surgery Blog Number 8 – Pain

Pain is one of the most common reasons for a patient seeking medical advice. It also plays a major role in the progress of all sorts of diseases and conditions, in other words, sometimes the pain is the thing, and at other times it is an outcome of the thing.

Spiral 6… What comes after red?

It is a highly successful way to arrive at a result that no one necessarily desires or wants and that might just kill us all.

Bacteria

Better to fail in a failed system than to undertake an experiment with the same outcome.

Night at the hospital

There is an assumption that when the lights go down and the night-staff appear on the scene that things become quiet and still – a little like a scene from Bambi.

Person-centred

Could you Facetime your doctor when you are on holiday in Greece rather than having to wade through the complexities of health insurance (yes, Brexiters) and a foreign health system?

Stop!

She survived. She could have died – I never asked the question.

1328 and some

‘Did my dad die because someone didn’t follow policy, didn’t pay attention or, was the outcome inevitable?’ ‘Might my mum have survived the operation if she had a different surgeon or she was at a different hospital?’

Revealing, honesty and openness

Thank goodness for those who push the boundaries, who are open and transparent, showing the world that we aren’t infallible, perfect beings. That we are all human.

Unnatural selection

You are unconscious, the focus for the doctors and nurses is maintaining your physiology with particular attention to your brain and heart.

Evolution two ways & Rio

As modern humans we are the best of the best – most of us are perhaps not as perfect as the Olympians strutting their stuff at Rio, but, pretty damn good.

Medicines, etc.

Nevertheless, within the dark underbelly of medicine, where geriatricians live, there are some quite stunning effects often, from stopping and sometimes starting medicines.

The Interceptors

The point, as is often the case, is my aversion to patients. Or rather, the existential construct that relates to the ‘patient state’ = they who suffer; with the principal goal of my life being to obviate suffering, my objective is to really stop people turning into patients.

And that is the role of the interceptors.

Let’s talk

We humans are so incredibly expert at communication that we often forget about its importance, a little like breathing – which in a similar vein, is only an issue when you can’t.

Things could have been different…

How to change the system?

Groupthink umami

This I imagine is worldview mixed with upbringing, culture and something else; in cookery, this would be the Umami.

Continuity (ii)

I try my best to ensure the continuity of care, of relationships, particularly on my ward, which is critical as so many of the patients themselves are lost – being lost within a system which is itself lost, must be terrifying.

Vindication

And so, back to the junior doctors –

Complex Adaptive Systems, Steppenwolf & Siddhartha

The essence of this is not to not do nothing, but, when we act, whether that act is big – going to war, or small, deciding to smile, there is a likelihood that the effects will reverberate far into time and space.

Visiting time, or, what is 21st Century Medicine?

Our actions at times border on the holy, and we cannot allow the profane to defile the sanctity of the experience.

You don’t know what you’ve got…

And so, to my colleagues, the team of Mallard, I say, here we are – we are something special, we are the exception to the exception that allows magical things to happen.

There is a balance

Balance is the essence of nature; winter and summer, hot and cold, dead or alive, we constantly fluctuate between these extremes.

Leaders and leadership

What does it take to make a leader? Last night I watched ‘Inside Obama’s White House’ – I guess, if you want a mould, if you want a standard by which to define a leader, it is Obama. I believe that ‘Obama’ is one of the greatest events/things/people to have happened in the 21st Century – admittedly,Continue reading “Leaders and leadership”

Bruce Lee & names in healthcare

One of Bruce’s other sayings was that JKD was ‘a circle without a circumference’ I think I might be starting to understand where he was heading with that idea.

Attitudes, beliefs and limitations

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Innocence and experience – sorry, I don’t know

Unless I am 100% sure that it is the left kidney, surely I should ask before I remove the wrong one, or prescribe the wrong medicine or convey the wrong information.

I don’t like pathways

To a box, the world is the world, is the world.

Collective Intelligence

If 100,000 other doctors, clinicians, nurses, therapists, lay people, patients, carers, survivors, problem solvers, academics, technicians, engineers, poets and philosophers had listened to my story, would they be of a similar opinion, would your certainty be the same?

You don’t have ‘x’

You don’t have ‘x’ – this can be good news for some, for others it doesn’t really help… Let me explain. If a person feels ill or has a specific symptom – (the easier ones tend to be breathlessness, chest pain or cough), there are a fairly standard set of tests or investigations whichContinue reading “You don’t have ‘x’”

John Lennon and HD TV

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, John Lennon sang this in 1980 in ‘Beautiful Boy’, which featured in his Double Fantasy album. Listening to it brings back memories and feelings of my life in the 80’s (a desultory Glaswegian schoolboy). I was thinking about this song on Friday when IContinue reading “John Lennon and HD TV”

Human Factors, space-time and Yiddishkeit

On Friday I attended the Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Collaborative ‘One Year On’ conference. A number of speakers from the region discussed the work they are doing to make predominantly hospitals, but all care in the wider sense, safer, less likely to result in inadvertent harm. Primum non nocere – first, do no harm,Continue reading “Human Factors, space-time and Yiddishkeit”