The Way of the Wombat

OK - this is a quick résumé of my week at work starting last Friday.

Friday; computer in community hospital won't let me access my patient notes. Techie is nice middle aged lady who understands why this is a problem, recognises the cause of the problem, gets someone else to remotely fix it. Hurrah!

Monday; encounter identical problem at main hospital - however I was prepared, had written down name of person who corrected problem remotely on Friday, and managed to contact them so they were able to do the same fix. Cause is, apparently, a system update.

Tuesday; into my own office to find I can't log onto the system at all. Neither office-mate is in so I eventually try one of their computers to find it isn't just my lap-top... ring our own admin support to discover entire government system has crashed. Can't even ring patients as I can't access notes or schedule for the day - do some sorting of paper stuff, and some shredding. Finally enough of system restored for me to do some proper  work about 10.30 - good thing our bit is regarded as a priority - other bits, like the courts, were down much longer, D-d tells me later.

Wednesday; into office to discover the programme that handles my patient notes is down - something to do with Tuesday's 'fix' I gather. However, I knew where I was going and who I was going to see, so just went. Called in at Mum's at lunchtime as I was nearby - she is convinced, after conversation with GP surgery (also on government computer system...) that the receptionist blames everything on computer problems and actually doesn't do anything. Reassure mother there really WAS a computer problem. She is unimpressed; a bit of paper was all you needed in her day...

Today; into office, everything works! Until about 9.30 when we get a message via the intra-net to explain that the main Isle-of-Man internet link to the rest of the world has been damaged and we are, basically, cut off from the outside world... Takes until 13.40 to mend, and then there is an enormous backlog - but at least it didn't really interfere with work!

Goodness knows what it will be like tomorrow....

I've just had an unexpected afternoon off work... sadly because my car was dunched at lunchtime - with me in it. I'm OK - although I was very shaken at the time. I was turning off the road to go to our main work stores, checked the car behind me as I slowed to a stop, and he seemed to be decelerating, then there was an almighty 'bang' and he had accelerated into me. He was only a young man, accepted it was entirely his fault, and there was a witness - so no worries about that, but I was very shaken, and the work car is a bit second-hand.

I actually went on down the 20 yards to stores, where I was sat down, given a cup of tea, and as soon as my manager knew she came straight up and took me to A&E, waited with me, sorted out the car stuff, and brought me home. She also cancelled my afternoon clinic. A good manager!

A&E doctor declared me to have mild whiplash, gave me some anti-inflammatories, and predicted I will feel much stiffer tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure he is going to be proved right about that. But - I'm fine really.

I spent this morning learning how to do Percutaneous Tibial Nerve Stimulation - this involved all of us who are part of the uro-gynae team on the island gleefully, or timidly depending on personality, sticking needles into each other's ankles and then sending an electric current through it!

This was to increase the treatments available to ladies who have over-active bladder problems ('ladies' simply because of the team who have learnt - we do a ladies' waterworks clinic). Part of our ethic is that, wherever possible, we should not ask patients to try something we haven't tried ourselves - so we were all there with our socks off and our trousers rolled up, or our tights off if we were wearing skirts, learning on each other - everyone from the clinic nursing assistant to the consultant - he was the first volunteer.

It was actually a really good morning - and the other staff in the vicinity said our laughter could be heard out on the corridor - they all wondered what we were doing that was such fun! And I can honestly tell patients that, having had it done to me, it tingles a little but really would be quite a nice way to spend half an hour a week for 12 weeks.

There is a really good video on YouTube - here for anyone who is interested.

Greetings from wet and windy York. I came over on Sunday, and brought D-d back after her half-term week at home, so I’ve had a couple of days to do some Christmas shopping, and hang out with my daughter, very restful.

Tomorrow, however, the excitement happens! I leave here on a train about 10.30 in the morning to go to London – arrive about 12.30 and go to a hotel just off Oxford Street, where I meet up with three colleagues from work – my ‘support team’! One of them, and I, plan a wander up and down Oxford Street, then I will toddle back to the hotel, have a wee rest, and then put on my glad-rags as it is the night of the Nursing Times Awards Dinner, at the Hilton on Park Lane.

I really don’t expect to win my class, but it will be quite an experience to go to the event. It is a dinner, the awards, and then dancing and ‘networking opportunities’ (Ugh!) till 1a.m. Then back to the hotel where we stay, grab a few hours sleep, and then the other three fly home on Thursday morning and I get a train back to York, back here to the Holiday Inn (only 500yards from D-d’s place) for another night, dinner with D-d, and then drive up to Heysham for the Friday afternoon boat home.

I really, really, hope the weather will have improved by then…

As for the posh-frock dinner… yes, there will be photos – I have even borrowed D-d’s camera as it fits into my small handbag better than mine does.

And I promise I’ll post to say how I got on.

I have watched with horrified amazement what is going on in the United States over the possibility of improving the health care of the nation as a whole by including more people into a national insurance scheme.

The wonderful misinformation I see about health care outside the USA would be hilariously funny if it wasn't so totally libellous.

I am probably not surprised that there does not appear to be a legal requirement for adverts to be truthful - although they might, in the long term, be more effective if people knew that they could trust them. There again perhaps many Americans don't realise that they cannot believe what they are told in 'infomercials'. I remember being amazed at this when Rudy Giuliani told insulting lies about me and my colleagues in 2007.

So regard this post as a Public Information Announcement.

The internationally accepted measures of the health, and health care, of a nation are usually seen to be the infant mortality rate and the life expectancy. Maternal death rate is seen as a third indicator.

You might be surprised to hear that, using these measure, the USA is not only not the best in the world, as some of your politicians tell you, you don't even make it into the top ten forty.

To ensure that figures cannot be considered to be in anyway biased against the USA, these are all from the CIA site - then confirmed them at the World Health Organisation.

Infant mortality - out of 224 countries the USA is 44th. Your baby is more likely to survive if you live in somewhere like Sweden, Japan, Iceland, France, the UK, Anguilla, the Czech Republic, Wallis and Fortuna (!) Cuba - and 34 other places. The top ten ALL, as far as I can ascertain, have some form of National Insurance/ government financed health care system.

Life Expectancy - the USA has only the fiftieth best life expectancy in the world - and guess what? Most of the countries who beat you have socialised health care. Countries like Japan, Canada, France, the UK. Here on the Rock, with only one small National Health hospital and anything bigger requiring transfer by air to, well a UK NHS facility, we still have a better life expectancy...

The third indicator - maternal mortality rate - the statistics are for fewer countries - and in this case the USA just makes it into the top 20 - at 20, again mostly behind countries with 'socialised medical care'. For comparison - in the USA your lifetime chance of maternal death is 1 in 4,800 - it is 1 in 8,200 in the UK with it's scary open to all, free at the point of need, health service.

My favourite example of the amazing misinformation in the US is the person who wrote an editorial for something called Investors Business Daily and said

“People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless,”

How wonderfully ridiculous is that? Professor Hawkings, born and bred in the UK, regarded as a Great British Hero, of course, replied, via the Guardian “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”

As I understand it, because his MND began when he was still a student, he would have been uninsurable under the US system as it stands at the moment...

Personally, I believe all should have equal access to health care, but it is everyone's right to decide on whether they agree or not. I have to say, though, that if I was an American I would hope I had Swedish ancestors, or Japanese ones, and so could return to somewhere with better health care...

OH - and, of course, alongside the NHS Britain has private hospitals and private doctors etc. if people choose to use them...

Previous chapters are Here.

Chapter Ten.
Rating 15.
5,050 words.
Beta'd, as usual, by S2C. ( Is under here. )

In other news - well it's no wonder this island is so green - it is raining again - and again. Feels like November - apart from the flowers that are in bloom!

I have almost packed my entire office into transit boxes - although there still doesn't seem to be a definite date to move, even though the original deadline was tomorrow. Throwing out every memo that you've been sent over the last five years is very liberating! I decided that as the other people in my new office will have copies of them all, I could shred all mine - yay!

Final silly thought - I was just putting my location as 'in transit' - and it reminded me that as a twenty-something I had friends who raced motor-bikes - one of them had the inevitable Transit van, to take the bikes to meetings, called 'Gloria Monday'. Because it was often a sick transit....

(If you don't understand that last bit, do ask!)