The Boerewors Emergency Medicine Chronicles: Sense about Science

Friday, 31 December 2010

Sense about Science

Tuesday was a truly horrible day at work.

In fact its fair to say that the NHS services in this town were simply unable to cope with the volumes of patients....our Unit saw almost 200 patients in the 14 hours that we were open...70 patients booked in between 0900 and 1000....with 3 Nurse Practitioners at work to deal with the list....with 2 more ENP's staring work at 1200....so 5 ENP's in total because the management didn't think we would be busy...after all...its not like we have ever been open over Christmas before and been swamped with patients...oh...no...wait...we were swamped last year and the year before that....and the year before that....not to mention the year before that.

And of course this year we have had the snow and ice directly resulting in an increase in slips and falls ...and thus in various assorted bony injuries.

So for most of the day there was a 4 to 5 hour wait to see someone.

The "Out of Hours" emergency doctor service had a call back list of over 850 patients for most of the day and a 24 hour call back time.

And at St Vulvas hospital,A&E patients were queuing down the road whilst at one stage,some 17 ambulances were being held,unable to off-load their patients.

In the middle of all of this chaos,I saw a 12 year old boy with Rubella...German measles.

Its an odd thing to see in a first world country where the MMR immunisation is typically prevalent...and so I asked his mother if he had been immunised...

Oh no...she simpered...we don't believe in in vaccinations...they cause problems like autism

Dear Lord...take me now!!

And so...for those of you who believe in evidence based medicine and in the right of researchers and scientists to refute bad,mad science then please have a look at the Sense about Science website.

Sense About Science is an independent charitable trust. It responds to the misrepresentation of science and scientific evidence on issues that matter to society, from scares about plastic bottles, fluoride and the MMR vaccine to controversies about genetic modification, stem cell research and radiation.

They work with scientists and civic groups to promote evidence and scientific reasoning in public discussion.

Their recent and current priorities include alternative medicine, MRI, detox, radiation, health tests, the status of evidence in public health advice, an educational resource on peer review, the public language of science, the impact of libel law and independent scientific advice.

1 comment:

anne11 January 2011 at 19:03
I am afraid you have found that special species of extra-crunchy tofu-eating granola-bar person whose thought processes can not be penetrated by logic or double-blind controlled experiment. There is no point in discussing anything with people who know it all already. I can tell you so many stories of this sort of thing, but I will, with great effort, restrain myself here. Germany is the world capital of wealthy, well-educated non-vaccinators, homeopaths, and natural-healing gurus. I'll leave it at that.
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What I do and where I do it

Naturally...naturally... this blog is a complete work of fiction.Of course it is... None of the people (or their relatives) or any apparent colleague or indeed any event mentioned within the blog, exist, or have ever existed. Really..no..really...Honestly..trust me..*right*

If you think that you recognise yourself, -particularly if you are a clinician or an ex-girlfriend-, then you have a narcissistic personality disorder.

However if any part was true then the introduction might read something like this:-
I work as an autonomous Emergency Nurse Practitoner serving a charming English seaside town called Little-Ghetto-on-Sea, on the East coast, closer in fact to Europe than to London.
We treat a wide range of minor illness and injury , with admitting privileges to St Vulva's, the main academic hospital some 20 miles away .
It is apparently one of the UK's most densely populated city's...and fits Littlejohn's discription in the Daily Mail when he says,"most British seaside towns are run-down dole-claimant dormitories,which seem to take a perverse delight in driving people away through a combination of rip-off prices , tatty boarding houses and disgusting food and draconian parking regimes" . It often feels as if it is the setting for 'Little Britian' which most foreign readers will know is more social commentary than cutting-edge comedy.Indeed most of the male patients are typically shaven headed pierced,inked,dirty-fingered,dull eyed ,baseball-cap wearing, unemployed smokers with prodigious drinking skills. The women have a limited vocabularly, ranging from "innit" to "my (human) rights" with not much else inbetween.Invariably they have several children from different consorts (love that word!) and walk through the town talking on their cell phones and ignoring their children.There are few vegetarians and even fewer graduates.

DISCLAIMER

This site is for entertainment purposes only.

Any patient interactions or cases that are posted here are not based upon any single person ,living or dead ;or any specific event.

Conversations in quotes and remarks that appear to be quoted verbatim are not necessairly true. All patient details are changed to make identifying them impossible, far exceeding the minimum standards for de-identification of patient information.

However , occasionally , ECG strips ,photographs,or x-ray images that are of clinical interest are posted and are subject to that particular patient having given me written permission for the image to be published;and no original NHS images or materials are used,removed or uploaded from any of the hospitals in which I work.

Under no circumstances should any reader assume or think that any nursing or medical advice is being dispensed.

No nurse/patient relationship,- or indeed any theraputic relationship of any kind-,will be established by you reading and/or commenting upon this blog.