Thursday 21 June 2007

God hates bloggers

Just when it was getting interesting on my favorite blog reads at Devils Kitchen, Dr Rant and Dr Crippen a combination of NHS censorship and divine intervention put me out of action over the last week.
I have commented before that Dr Rant cannot be accessed from many work computers because it is "Tasteless". This is something of an own goal for a medical blog as many people who are interested would want to access it at work. Our NHS Trust in England blocks this site and more recently the private Nuffield Hospital has also started to block it. I could access it in a Welsh NHS hospital. Either they haven't got round to banning it yet or the Welsh are less easily offended!
Last week I found Devils Kitchen blocked because of the use of a certain 4-letter word which, interestingly, was displayed prominently on the screen explaining why the site was blocked.
When I tried to access the sites from home I found that a lighning strike had disabled my computer. I managed to fix this myself but there have been lightning storms every evening this week so I have had to leave my computer unplugged.
One of the blogs I wanted to leave a comment on was the Dr Rant assertion that radiographers and nurses don't do routine work outside the hours of 9-5. The team have seriously misjudged this and show themselves up as being out of touch.
The arguement that patients receiving nursing care in hospital after 5 must be emergencies just makes no sense and our radiographers provide a routine service on Saturdays and would do more if the funding was available. We bend over backwards to provide a service to suit patient demands, whatever our personal views on the sense in this, because the GPs can send patients to whoever provides the most accessible service. It is odd therefore that providing an accessible service shouldn't apply to GPs.

3 comments:

Devil's Kitchen said...

Dr,

May I recommend a surge-protected power-board? About £18 for a four-gang, but cheaper than a new computer...

DK

Dr Xavier Ray said...

Thanks DK,
Perhaps I have a dud but I already had one on the PC and it has let me down. Now I don't risk it.
Someone only 100 yds from us had his laptop explode and fly up into the air while he was using it during a lightning storm a few weeks ago so I just stay away from anything electrical now.

Dr Rant said...

"One of the blogs I wanted to leave a comment on was the Dr Rant assertion that radiographers and nurses don't do routine work outside the hours of 9-5. "

Just found this.

I'm interested to hear that you provide routine x-rays outside office hours. Certainly, I've never seen it - and I can't access this in my area.

Interestingly, we now know that over 93% of GP patients are happy with the opening hours, and one London GP surgery that has invested in opening weekends and evenings has been reporting that they are not attracting new patients as hoped. In fact, they are concerned because the patients have been complaining about reduced continuity of care due to the new shift working patterns of the GPs.