
How The European Union Kills
People
There is no doubt that one
of the reasons why our health care system is a failure is because it is
distorted by regulations, targets and legislation - some of which originate in
London but much of which now comes from the European Union.
There is no
doubt at all that the European Union has done enormous damage to the quality of
medical care provided to patients in Europe. It is, for example, because of the
EU that general practitioners in England no longer provide 24 hour cover for
their patients and it is because of the EU that hospital patients rarely see the
same doctor twice and may often go for several days (particularly over weekends
and bank holidays) without seeing a doctor at all.
It was back in the
1990s that European politicians and bureaucrats insisted that the European
working-time directive should be applied to doctors as well as coach drivers and
factory workers. This was done purely for political reasons.
Britain
accepted the EU rules for doctors. (The Government could have refused to accept
the legislation but it didn't. As our politicians always do, our ministers bowed
down to the EU's demands.) One reason for the acceptance of the new legislation
was, without doubt, the fact that there will, as a result of sexual
discrimination, soon be far more women in medicine. Women doctors are far less
likely to be driven by vocation and altruistic motives and far more likely to
want as much money as possible for as little work as possible. Many women
doctors marry, have babies and want to work office hours. Just like female MPs,
they demand a regulated `work-life balance' and expect the job commitments to be
adjusted to suit them. They aren't prepared to give the commitment that male
doctors have always given. And so patients lack continuity and male doctors have
to work harder. The result has been the worst and fastest deterioration in the
NHS since its inception in 1948.
Today the entire NHS is in a mess,
doctors no longer provide patients with anything half way decent medical care,
and patients are dying like flies because the quality of care has deteriorated.
There is no longer any continuity of care.
Thanks largely to the EU
employment rules doctors in hospital (as in general practice) are now working
strictly limited hours. Many GPs no longer provide the 24 hour, 365 day service
which was an integral part of family practice just a few years ago. The modern
GP works the sort of hours usually associated with schoolteachers, librarians
and accountants. Similarly, many hospital doctors now work only short, fixed
weeks. Hospital doctors who are `on call' are deemed to be working when they are
sleeping.
At the same time the EU has also taken rights away from
patients and given all the rights to employees. The result is that staff
everywhere have all the power and can be as rude as they like without censure.
Today, if doctors work more hours than the EU permits then the hospital
must pay a huge fine. (In exactly the same way that the EU controls the amount
and type of rubbish our councils can collect so doctors working hours are
controlled precisely by the EU.) The result of this bureaucratic absurdity is
that doctors have to leave half way through treating patients and at weekends
hospitals are often completely empty of doctors. I wonder how many patients have
died as a result of this policy? I'm damned sure it is considerably more than
ever died as a result of doctors being tired. Today it is rare to see a doctor
(or a physiotherapist or, indeed, anyone else who isn't a patient or a visitor)
in a hospital at weekends. Patients are left lying in bed for over two days. No
one, it seems, has heard of deep vein thromboses or pressure sores.
Today, hospitals don't discharge patients at the weekend because
consultants aren't available then. And they know that if they send patients home
at the weekend they will have empty beds and will have to take new patients -
something they don't like doing over weekends with a skeleton medical staff in
the hospital.
Another result of the shortage of doctors has been that
nurses have been given the right to prescribe and to perform surgery - and to
take on these responsibilities without any medical supervision and without the
sort of training required for doctors. To the problem of bad prescribing by
doctors has now been added the problem of bad prescribing by nurses. Most nurses
(like most doctors) know very little about the drugs they prescribe and know
next to nothing about side effects. We need fewer - not more - people handing
out prescriptions.
To make sure that doctors stick to the EU's
regulations, hospitals actually employ highly-paid bureaucrats whose sole job is
to make sure that young doctors clock off on time and don't spend a moment more
than they should looking after patients. Hospitals employ Working Time Directive
Project Managers (salaries around £40,000 a year) whose job description involves
ensuring the compliance of young professionals with the 48 hour working limit.
So, with one thing and another, it is hardly surprising that it is often
difficult to find a doctor on a hospital ward these days. And it is hardly
surprising that the standard of care in our hospitals has fallen and still
falling rapidly.
And it is hardly surprising that more and more patients
are getting fed up with the poor quality of care they receive from doctors. In
2007, the number of complaints heard by the General Medical Council was twenty
times as great as it had been in 1997. Incidentally, a high proportion of the
complaints relate to services provided by foreign born doctors. Naturally, no
one is allowed to mention this although it has been the case for some years.)
Forcing the EU working directive into the world of medicine has created
one other massive problem.
When doctors qualified in the 1970s,
specialists only became consultants or GPs after around 30,000 hours of
experience and training. In 1971, when I was a junior hospital doctor I worked
all the hours available. It was not uncommon for a junior house officer to work
168 hours a week, snatching hours of sleep whenever there was a lull in
activity. We didn't complain about this because it was an accepted part of our
training and, being young, we managed perfectly well. Every patient was looked
after by a designated consultant team. The consultant, registrar and house
officer were responsible for patients from their admittance to their discharge.
The extraordinary workload meant that young, resident doctors learned an
enormous amount about practical, medical care. Today, thanks to reduced working
hours, young doctors can become consultants or fully qualified GPs after 6,000
hours of training. So, today's specialists have one fifth the experience of
their predecessors just 30 years ago. How can that possibly be acceptable? If
airline pilots were suddenly allowed to fly passenger planes after a training
period that had been cut by four fifths there would be a public outcry.
Copyright Vernon Coleman 2012 Taken from Do Doctors And Nurses Kill
More People Than Cancer? by Vernon Coleman. This book is published by EMJ
Books. For details of how to purchase a copy please visit the shop on this
website.
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