Apparently you have a bigger chance of dying if you are ill at night or at a weekend. I am sure this has always been the case, but hard working doctors have to sleep sometime.
However, there is a confusion between emergency hospital care and routine stuff.
Emergency care has always been provided by the day team using an on-call rota system.
Unless you experience it, you cannot imagine the awfulness of working a long hard day, going to bed exhausted, only to be woken soon afterwards by the phone for an emergency. Having to get up and deal with it, then, if you are lucky, getting back to bed for a minimal sleep, before getting up at the normal time for the next day's work.
Mothers of young babies have a similar experience, but do not have to snap their brains and bodies into action in a similar way. I know as I have experienced both.
Routine hospital work is a different thing.
Does it make sense for expensive scanners, operating theatres etc to be sitting idle at night and at weekends when there are such huge queues for their use?
Well - that is how accountants see it. But these expensive facilities are only functional with the appropriate teams of expensive experts to run them. So - yes - the scanner could be used all night and weekend, but money would have to be found to employ a second team of staff to work at those times.
The operating theatre could be used 24/7, but a second team of staff would have to be employed to man it. There would also have to be additional pre-op, high dependency and post-op wards to put those patients into and additional staff employed to man those wards.
They would then have to factor in the reduced life expectancy of scanning equipment and OR equipment, that was being used twice as much as before.
Additional path lab facilities would also have to be paid for.
Where would all these extra highly trained members of staff come from?
So - in a world where money was no object - it is a splendid idea, but otherwise - NO
I was in hospital about 5 years ago - for an operation. I noticed several empty wards and was told it was because of a lack of nursing staff. Since then - there has been a further reduction in nursing staff!
I worked in the aviation industry, and I would estimate probably 80% of those employed there worked shifts of some kind, from the aircrew, maintenance engineers through to the check-in staff, baggage handlers, etc. I worked at the Air Traffic Control Centre which was staffed every day of the year, including Christmas and Easter. Take leave at Easter? You must be joking!
ReplyDeleteNHS Hospitals work mainly 9-5 and no weekends or public holidays.
Yet air travel is not a necessity, no-one is going to die if they can't fly off on their package holiday on Good Friday, yet an essential service like the NHS packs up and goes home.
Our Tesco is open 7days and nights a week, only closing for a few hours on Sundays because of the Sunday trading laws. Again, no-one will die if they can't shop at Tesco at midnight, but people can die if they don't get emergency medical treatment when they need it.
Our whole system of priorities is upside down.