No Shit Sherlock!

The Royal College of Surgeon's (RCS) recent report on the appalling death toll of patients admitted for out of hours and emergency surgery is to be commended. It has been a long time in coming and highlights the dangers associated with being admitted to Accident and Emergency in the evening, or worse, at the weekend. It sheds light on the dangerous and often fatal, lack of care imposed upon patients who present with, often simply diagnosed conditions, who then become even sicker than on admission due to lack of manpower, facilities and very basic care that all of us hope to avail ourselves of, should we be unfortunate enough to have an accident or become ill outwith the Primary Care pathway.

The NHS is quite good at the provision of elective surgery, especially cardiac surgery. It is however significantly lacking in safety when it comes to major general and emergency surgery, with both higher mortality and complication rates than are acceptable in the setting of modern hospital care. Of 170,000 patients treated for non-cardiac surgery we manage complication rates of more than half at 100,000! And of those, we actually manage to kill 25,000! Mortality rates for emergency surgery in England and Wales is over 25%, with early discharge and subsequent re-admission being a significant factor in these statistics. The other horrifying figure is that our chances of dying is 10% greater if it's a weekend!

Well I'm no stranger to this situation, when she, with whom I have have decided to end my days, became part of these same statistics. Delays, both in pain management, diagnosis and treatment at a very basic level were missing, possibly because it was early on a Friday evening. No Consultant on duty, just a few nurses or rather 'healthcare assistants'. Of Doctors, well none until some five hours into admission. Tests, well there were plenty of those, in fact it seemed to be a goal rather than any sort of pathway to treatment, as hindsight indicated that none of the results were followed up! An X-ray was eventually carried out, but nonetheless a a treatment protocol was then pursued that was contraindicated and injurious and resulted in an outcome she still lives with to this day and which will blight her life until it's end.

Weekend surgery did take place, 'squeezed' into the list between the 'elective' private patients who had the surgical suite given over to them for some Saturday 'bunce' for the Consultants. Postoperative care was poor to non-existent with severe hypotension ignored, as was the diabetic keto-acidosis, and very low oxygen saturation that kept triggering alarms ( to my alarm).

So, this report does not surprise me in the least. The apathy and stupidity demonstrated to me by my personal involvement in this event did at the time. Up to then (2008) I had not had any chance to witness first hand the terrible position in our hospitals especially in emergency care. Any contact I did have had faded, like most bad memories do; part of that 'defence' mechanism our minds have to retain sanity. Despite my many ailments, and a minor wound in my early history with firearms, none was dependant on a hospital stay and I hope that it remains so. So dear reader, I would suggest that you plan for any emergency you may have in health care for you and yours, on a weekday between 0900 and 1700hrs. Or of course join with me and others to press for a whole new paradigm in health care and medicine, that is patient centred and based on scientific treatments. I want to tear it all down, rip it to shreds, along with many of those that perpetuate it by virtue of vested interest or hubris or worst, apathy.