Looking Out From the Inside

Being on the other side of healthcare is tiring, taxing and upsetting.

Seeing how other places cope, or do not cope, how other teams discuss and explain or fail to do so, is very much a learning experience.

Medicine is very much an art not a science. Medical people know this. The media do not. Nor do the general public as a whole. Individual people do.

Medicine is about balancing complex risk and benefit equations according to other peoples needs and wants, all whilst the person whose body and health this is may disagree, may change their mind, may be scared, or may not care. Someone's treasure is someone else's foot note.

No one truly expects to live forever. No one truly wants to live forever, unless their body and brain keep ticking over at the right RPM. The Tech Bro who thinks he can has forgotten the easiest way to live forever - be remembered for the right reasons…. The $2,000,000 per year he spends on his narcissistic voyage (he is a payment tech bro, so maybe he doesn't think spending money on charity is the right thing)…

Personally I would rather be known as a philanthropist, rather than an idiot. Though in my case I would be known as both no doubt.

Navigating healthcare is tough. I know how to navigate it, and also how to apply relatively subtle pressure in the right places to ensure that things go as they should do. Sometimes that is a word at the right time to the right people in a pleasant way. Sometimes it is a further word at the right time, at length, to someone who will listen. Sometimes it's a shout against the wind.

It is very tough to maintain sanity and get progress. I do wonder if everyone should have relatives on the ward round. I'm not sure. I wonder what prompted Derriford to change to this?

Whatever, things move over so slowly and that is probably a good thing. There's enough today that moves too fast.

What is clear is that paper records should definitely be in the bin in this day and age.

Plymouth, England, United Kingdom