There have been two particularly gruesome cases which have come to light recently in which evidently very ill and disturbed patents with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, after being in their local hospital, are then released ‘under the care of their GP’ But the individuals in question seem to have refused their medication, failed to keep appointments and then have gone on to kill by stabbing individuals in broad daylight. The acute services, and this applied equally to mental as well as to physical health concerns, do a good job but after the acute phases of their operations have been conducted they then discharge individuals ‘back into the he care of their local GP’ This is the point at which our health services completely break down. We are led to believe that a person who has had perhaps multiple instances of an acute mental illness or disorder with then fail to take their medication and are supposed to wait patiently at the end of a telephone for several minutes to try to arrange an appointment with their doctor, which in the first instance is a telephone consultation. Now this is not going to happen and typically does not, the overall problem being that we know how to treat acute episodes or conditions but problems of a more chronic nature are left to fester. We know from our own family experiences that this is the weak point in the system and it is far easier to state the problem than to attempt to resolve it. Our GP services are under such pressure that there has been talk of limiting the number of patients that can be seen in one day (say to 25 rather than the 40 which I think is more the norm). Even pay itself, although an irritant, is not the complete answer which really lies in the fact that we need many GPs in the system. The government is trying to alleviate this problem by recruiting ‘Physician Associates’ who are individuals with some biological background who are then a crash course in medicine and thrown into the front line. We have seen this before with ‘Teaching Assistants’ in schools and the thinking behind this all is eventually to attempt to cheapen the resource total as a whole by recruiting only half trained staff. Now many of these newly recruited staff no doubt do an excellent job and routine conditions may be easy to treat but there is a worry that more complex or complicated conditions will not be diagnosed or treated. The long term solution would be to rapidly expand our medical schools and of course in the short term we could recruit more from our European neighbours – but this is no longer a feasible option after Brexit. Without wishing to sound xenophobic, I read recently that approximately one half of the new jobs created in the UK recently have been filled with personnel of either Nigerian or Indian origin between 2019 and 2023. I somehow do not feel that replacing the predominantly white labour force supplied to us by our continental neighbour and replacing them with personnel from the Asian and African continent is what those who voted for Brexit intended.
Today is the day when we go down the road to make contact with our Waitrose friends. We were particularly glad to see our chorister friend who is in her 90’s but who we have not seen for a couple of occasions so a smidgeon of worry about her was arising within us. She had been finding the walk down to town a little arduous possibly because her medication had been altered. We told her about ‘The Lemon Tree’ which might be a slightly shorter journey for her so we said that we would like to see her on Friday if that is a little easier for her to access. It was a beautiful day today and so the journey up and down the hill was quite a pleasant one today. Meg has a sitter today so that in theory I can attend Pilates – in practice, there is something else urgent for me to attend to and such was the case today when I needed to pay a visit to our local Post Office.On the occasions that i go there, I always seem to be behind someone in a queue whose Post Office transaction is long and complicated and today was no exception. But on the way home, I did the quickest of tours around our local Salvation Army and relieved them of a wall clock which I badly need in the upstairs bedroom where I have relocated the radio which displayed the time next to my bed downstairs.
You would imagine that pushing Meg and up down the hill would be quite arduous but not is all that it seems. Going on the downhill sections is a breeze if the slope is gentle but when the slope is more severe I have to use my triceps to ensure that the Meg and the wheelchair do not tun away with me. You would have thought that pushing Meg up hill would be difficult but this is only true for the (thankfully few) steeper sections. If there is a slight incline upwards then the weight of my body pushing Meg up the hill is not stressful. Also, since I have invested in my Hi-Vis vest (bright yellow) I am pretty sure that motorists are more inclined to stop and let me cross the road. There is a special unit that you can buy which affixes to a rear bar of the wheelchair (although ours does not have one) and this is a battery driven power wheel which gives particular assistance on going up hill.I have considered this but think that the benefits might be outweighed by the costs. I will not need the unit when going downhill or up very moderate uphill sections so the unit would only come into its own on the more steep uphill sections. Also it would add to the weight of the whole and possibly make it less manoeuvrable, particularly over kerbs so I am coming to the view that what initially looks like a good idea but not be overall.
I heard fragments of an interview in which Elon Musk and Donald Trump were forming a mutual adoration society with each other. Not only did I find this odious but I wonder whey the Main Street Media give it any airtime. The BBC reported some of the interview comments but then added that it was ‘fact checking’ some of the claims that Trump had made. But the BBC did not announce any of the results of the fact checking and I wonder when they are going to publish or release the same (I suspect never).
© Mike Hart [2024]