Swine Flu (again)

What the hell is going on with this country? More people die in 1 week from road accidents than have died so far this year from swine flu, 56 people per week in 2007, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1208 and the people who have died have in the huge majority had an underlying illness -see my last post. So why are we giving away prescription drugs to anyone who wants them? For years the medical profession have been trying to cut down on giving people antibiotics for the cold and now the government is giving away Tamiflu without it being necessary to even see a doctor or other prescriber. I have a question, if we are giving Tamiflu now when the Swine Flu is fairly mild, what are we going to do if it returns in the winter all new and improved and really nasty? And another thing, when I think of the hoops I had to jump through and the work I had to do, essays I wrote, exams I passed and the research I did just to be allowed to prescribe a couple of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen, why are people with a couple of hours training being allowed to prescribe?

Swine Flu

Apparently the obese are most risk of dying during the ongoing flu epidemic/pandemic whatever we are calling it now and there has been an increase in the number of coffins being built. Are we building big coffins for obese victims of swine flu? See today's Sunday Post. So far we have not had another update of Swine Flu guidelines for over a week, at one stage we were getting new ones every day. In my department we have pretty good procedures in place to segregate suspected swine flu victims from everyone else, except for one (in my opinion) major flaw. When we have a suspected case whichever nurse is available deals with the patient using the proper protective gear and stays with the patient throughout, all very sensible except for one thing - I could be that nurse, no complaints but when did my history of heart disease stop being a "serious underlying illness"? Every patient who has died so far has had a history of "serious underlying illness".

This is so typical of nursing, we had a large patient last week who needed mobilised, who did it? The pregnant nurse and the nurse with the heart disease - so I will just have to get on with looking after what ever comes my way regardless.

Been missing for a while as I have been keeping my head down a bit, really, really don't want to be sacked for breaching patient confidentiality.

I have discovered how to reduce the crime figures to zero at a stroke, it's really simple, let me explain.

A patient came to our department, police had been in attendance as he was a bit aggressive with the ambulance crew but settled with us and the police left. Patient decided that he did not want to be with us so walked out - no problem, we were glad to see the back of him and he was not in any danger. 5 minutes later he was back, someone had stolen his bank card and it had to have been us so could he have it back. Advised we did not have his card and that probably it had gone missing when he was lying on the ground where he was found. No, he had this card when he came to us. OK, you are obviously calling us thieves so you better get the police to us. How was he to do that he asked. Told to go and phone the police he then said that he had no money so would we phone the police for him? Got all upset when I burst out laughing. Could not get it into his head that if we are thieves why would WE phone the police to report ourselves. No, he wanted us to call the police. This got me thinking, if we could only get all criminals to call the police and report themselves after they have committed a crime the figures would plummet.
Eventually he was told that if we did call the police it would be to have him removed and the chances were that they would believe us rather than him. Last seen he was heading down the hill into town.