The speed at which the far-right has mobilized around this tragedy exposes a staggering empathy deficit.
For yrs, when Black communities in the UK called for inquiries into deaths in custody or the disproportionate use of force, the Far right's response was often to scrutinize the victim's past, defend the difficult job of the police, & demand unquestioning respect for law & order.
Now, when faced with a catastrophic police failure affecting a young white man, the immediate response from the right is anti-establishment fury & demands for RADICAL overhaul.
It forces the question: if experiencing just a fraction of the institutional dismissiveness minorities face is this unbearable, why was there such fierce resistance to understanding the minority experience for all these years?
Sir William Osler, 1849-1919, renowned as the father of modern medicine, famously instructed medical students to: "Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis." It's a simple dictum, but the foundation of the way Osler revolutionised healthcare by insisting that doctors step away from their desks and focus on their patients.
Everyone longs for functioning, joined-up NHS IT, @jamesmurray_ldn (though not via Palantir) - but to suggest, as you have in this post, that history-taking is a tedious irrelevance is to completely misunderstand the nature of medicine. That first conversation between doctor and patient is a close, shrewd, vital therapeutic encounter. As we listen, we observe, appraise, distil. Invariably, the diagnosis can be made. But history-taking, like the rest of medicine, is the marriage of science with humanity. It treats patients as people, not as objects with disease. Through your time, care and attentiveness in history-taking, you communicate something vital to a patient - that they matter and that you care.
Please never forget that healthcare is not a production line of objects, it's an enterprise built on relationships, with humanity at its core. Medical history-taking is its bedrock.
With all these media appearances to say nonsense, do you ever get the time to just sit down and think of what you’re doing or what you’ve been asked to say? Like critically think about it?
I know how distressing it is for patients to repeat their medical history over and over.
And the effort it takes for NHS staff to get the information they need.
We'll join up this fragmented system, helping clinicians give safer, co-ordinated care.
Taking a full medical history from the patient in front of you, regardless of what’s been done before, is 2/3 of the diagnostic process.
In medicine everything is mutable. Relying on what has been said or documented previously is dangerous.
So the reason we should prescribe OTC medicines so that patients can buy themselves is because the NHS is paying £136 million per year on these medicines.
So rather than pay, transfer the additional cost to the taxpayer who is already paying for the NHS. Nice.
Yesterday’s refereeing was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.
For the first 15 minutes, the ref fell for Arsenal’s shenanigans: blowing a foul for every slight fall and every little touch. Then, all of a sudden, he clocked their dirty antics and took complete control of the game.
He stopped buying their silly theatrics: Mosquera time wasting, Havertz falling at every slight touch, Saka wasting time for the corner, Arteta touchline tantrums, Madueke diving. I can go on and on
Arsenal have become so used to getting away with this cunning stuff from Premier League refs that they seemed genuinely shocked when it didn’t work.
I’m glad the referee refused to be intimidated and stood his ground. That’s how you referee a final.
You might con your way to a Premier League title, but you can’t do it in the UCL. Either you play like real men or go home
Primum non nocere.
Every doctor involved in the scandal of 'gender medicine', that slavishly followed the affirmation model with no circumspection and no evidence, betrayed their profession and patients.
On face value, the title “advanced nurse practitioner” should mean a nurse that “out-nurses” other nurses, not a Temu doctor, but we be wilding out here with terminology and oneupmanship.
Voltaire passed away today in 1778.
There are two quotes of his I always come back to:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
and
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
@queenofswords6@Gracie_Blue89 They probably shouldn’t be gallivanting on the job (assuming that they’re doing so and not on their break), but that doesn’t make their experience invalid. Their experience is the experience of many.
@queenofswords6@Gracie_Blue89 I would argue it is untrue that “no one asks for a white nurse”. You argue that that’s the case in your experience and if so, caveat ir properly.
In my experience, patients have, not in those particular words because that’s just rude.
“Could I have a nurse that speaks English” when the person in front of you clearly speaks English, but isn’t pallid.
Or “could I have a British nurse instead”?
Remember the outcry when the GMC became the register for PAs / AAs?
Now the GMC wants to create a single unified register: zero distinction.
UK Medicine will not be destroyed in one go: it’ll be a catalogue of decisions towards professional annihilation
https://t.co/MjxhGqDzwQ
Remember the outcry when the GMC became the register for PAs / AAs?
Now the GMC wants to create a single unified register: zero distinction.
UK Medicine will not be destroyed in one go: it’ll be a catalogue of decisions towards professional annihilation
https://t.co/MjxhGqDzwQ