Untrustworthy Doctors
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA
A friend who visited his local GP yesterday reported that the receptionists at his doctor's surgery are now operating a triage system.
The receptionists decide the order in which patients are seen according to their view on the seriousness of each patient's condition.
Triage, the assessment of illnesses to decide the order of treatment of patients, used to be done by doctors. It's a business requiring much medical knowledge and the ability to make decisions quickly and accurately.
Then, nurses started operating triage systems in hospital casualty departments. This was the first step in the dumbing down process.
Now, with receptionists making clinical decisions, the system has reached rock bottom. How long will it be before receptionists are allowed to write prescriptions and stitch up the wounded?
Even practising doctors now recognise that there are huge problems with general practice. One in five British GPs has admitted to having at least one incompetent colleague. This doesn't mean that one in five GPs has one colleague whom they didn't like or agree with. It means that one in five GPs regards at least one of their colleagues as incompetent.
Many of the doctors who had colleagues whom they regarded as incompetent admitted they did not report their views about their colleague to anyone in authority – partly for fear of retribution and partly because they suspected that nothing would happen.
And if one in five GPs is prepared to admit that he or she has incompetent colleagues how many GPs silently believe that they have incompetent colleagues?
One in three? One in two? All of them?
I suspect that doctors have never been trusted as much as they are today.
Sadly, not since the Middle Ages, have doctors been less worthy of that trust.
Copyright Vernon Coleman 2017
This article was taken from Vernon Coleman’s book Doctors Kill More Patients Than Cancer, now available as an ebook on Amazon.
There are hundreds of free articles on www.vernoncoleman.com and www.vernoncoleman.co.uk
For a biography please see www.vernoncoleman.org or www.vernoncoleman.net
And there are over 60 books by Vernon Coleman available as ebooks on Amazon.
I’m afraid, however, that you have to pay for those. (But not a lot.)
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