Wednesday, October 08, 2003
By the end of a set of Intensive Care shifts (13 hours, 8-9 am/pm day or night), I feel slightly deflated, usually smarting from the memory of several faux pas that I have made – like asking a dumb question of the consultant/boss, caught just-in-time errors or a foolish comment to a nurse. It is then that the beauty of “saving lives” (if following a set of rules could be called this) tends to be eclipsed by other emotions.
The papers here in Oz are full of articles about "greedy doctors" who are resigning in protest rather than pay an extra medical indemnity levy. (the background : early last year the biggest medical indemnity insurer, UMP, collapsed due to its inability to demonstrate to the government it could pay for all of the huge claims now being passed through the courts due to the litiginous Aussie culture - second only to California for the number and amount of claims. The government, which insists that all doctors are covered by medical insurance, - and faced by the spectre of thousands of doctors suddenly being unable to practise - gave a guarantee for the continued survival of UMP and then proceeded to bill all its members for money to cover this). People, including me, who paid a voluntary membership fee to UMP for years (we are covered by our hospitals anyway, but are advised that extra cover is good) were suddenly hit by a bill for thousands of dollars - and are still not covered by UMP for medical indemnity. Senior doctors are walking out or taking early retirement in protest.
The real problem, as I see it, is with the Aussie "it's not my fault - it must be someone else's" culture. An attitude supported by stupid laws and poor interpretation by judges. How else do you explain a court that awarded a man millions of dollars in damages against a city council after he dived into a shallow bay after getting pissed, not surprisingly hit his head and became a quadriplegic, then proceeded to sue the council for not putting a sign up saying "please do not dive into the shallow water when drunk"?. These are of course, the same idiots who claim the dole (part of which is the 45 % of my income taken by the Howard government), then wander into the emergency department having got into some knife fight or other. A bit hard to feel sympathy sometimes, despite my Oath.... And I suffer again when local clubs and societies can't afford the suddenly rocketing cost of public liabilities insurance and I miss out on a good bushwalking trip or something.
Ah, Australians..... sometimes I'm glad I'm getting outta here!!
email me: piokiwi@yahoo.com.au
If you got through all that, you deserve a laugh - therefore a completely unrelated picture of me after a bushwalk last year, during which I spent a substantial amount of time on my bum (thus inspiring the anthem: "Ode to the Humble Butt" - see archives). As you can see, I got a lot of sympathy from my fellow walkers.
Piokiwi 2:16 am
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