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?’

Unnatural selection

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

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.

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”

Patients in pyjamas

Patients in pyjamas – it might sound a little flippant, but I think this is something that is very important. I cannot comment on the behaviours of other patients outside of the UK – we, in Britain, approach hospital attire in a special way; pyjamas. I don’t know when pyjamas began in hospital – whether backContinue reading “Patients in pyjamas”

Reducing restrictive interventions

Take a moment to think of those nurses, healthcare assistants, therapists and domestics who daily see beyond the fear and the worry of an old person, to the human being who is hiding in the shadows, obscured by layers of disease, for they are what keep us human.

Therapeutic lies and false promises…

I have spent the past few days feeling bad – It is strange, when you discover that something you have been doing, that you had considered ‘right’ is explained to be wrong; it is a little like breaking the law when you don’t know something is illegal … I can’t think of an instance (or,Continue reading “Therapeutic lies and false promises…”

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”

There is a strange aesthetic associated with care

If you go to an art gallery, whether the National Portrait in London or your local museum, where paintings are displayed, there is something mesmerising about the human face; when an artist captures the moment of silence, of stillness or of movement, when the years are brought into focus and a person is seen as aContinue reading “There is a strange aesthetic associated with care”

Tigers, Scotsmen, and hospitals

Last night I watched a re-run of ‘Lost Land of the Tiger’ – this is a nature documentary with Steve Backshall, Scottish Wildlife Cameraman Gordon Buchanan, Scottish Entomologist George McGavin and others wandering about the highlands and lowlands of Bhutan in search of evidence of tigers. The programme focuses on the creation of a ‘tigerContinue reading “Tigers, Scotsmen, and hospitals”