Posted on 08/24/2006 8:34:54 AM PDT by Broker
I remember him coming rushing in from the garden that afternoon, in tears and covered in blood. After running his finger under the tap and seeing how deep the gash was, I decided to take him to our local A&E department at the King George hospital in Goodmayes, Essex.
Tony cried all the way there but soon perked up at the sight of the hospital and the doctors. Because his wound was bleeding so heavily, we were rushed straight through to see a doctor and Tony was given a painkilling injection. When the doctors said they wanted to transfer Tony to the a specialist reconstructive department at the nearby Broomfield hospital in Chelmsford in an ambulance, he could barely contain his excitement and forgot all about his cut.
I said to him "See you in a hour son", kissed him on the forehead, then went off to get a cup of tea.
Sitting on the chair next to Tony’s bed in the ward, I had no idea that almost as soon as I’d left the room, he had encountered difficulties. I had no idea that as I flicked casually through magazines, doctors were struggling to save Tony’s life.
I thought in a couple of hours, Tony would be ready to go home and would be chatting away about the welcome back dinner his mother was making him.
The first I knew anything was wrong was about an hour later, when a doctor and his assistant came and found me and ushered me into a side room. He looked at me and said "I don’t know how to tell you this but there’s been an absolute disaster."
Then he said that Tony had died.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
In May 2003, a jury inquest at Chelmsford Coroner’s Court returned a verdict of ‘accident contributed to by system neglect’. The foreman of the jury cited factors including ‘inadequate guidelines, failure to ensure the patency of all ancillary equipment and failure to follow guidelines concerning single-use medical devices’ as causes. David Scott, the consultant anaesthetist who investigated the case, told the inquest that Tony would probably have lived if doctors had disconnected the equipment and given him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It devastated us that his life could have been saved so easily.
Ah, the joys of socialized medicine.
Excuse me, but why didn't they just put a local on the finger and stitch it up? Fifteen minutes and he's out the door.
Apparently this resulted from the equipment being washed and then left jumbled up in drawers. This is despite strict guidelines issued in 2000 by the Medical Devices Agency (MDA) that breathing equipment should be used only once and then binned. "
This is so horribly sad and tragic, and, IMHO, so damning of socialized medical practices.
The NHS is not short of funds. It gets 1/3 of all VAT receipts as well as other resources. Being an uncompetitive orgnaisation it is inefficient with what it has - e.g. it has a high Manager to Bed ratio.
You can rest assured that nothing like this will ever happen to Hillary or anyone important to her (if there *is* anyone other than herself that she cares about) because she and her beautiful people "progressive" friends will opt out of whatever plan she has in mind for us common folk.
My wife's family is still in Germany. A friend of the family needed to schedule some surgery earlier in August 2006 (I forget what the surgery was exactly, but his primary physician recommended ASAP). He went to the surgeon who responded that for rush surgery, he could set up a data in October.. two months later! The man pleaded with the surgeon, who told him it would be impossible to fit him in any earlier because there was a backlog.
Then the man offered to pay the surgeon cash, unreported to the Bundes-folks (taxman, national insurance, etc). He was in the Operating Room the following Tuesday.
Is this kid a hemophiliac? A cut finger is elementary?
Some novacaine and sew it up. There has to be more to this.
Normal kid, disfunctional hospital. Go to link for the long story.. He had a cut finger and through a tragedy of errors was suffocated under anesthisia.
If its that bad they need to close it down. hell if the kid had no attention at all he would have lived.
We get what we pay for. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We should scrap this socialist system of health care delivery and pay for a market driven one.
ping
If Hillary has her way, we'll all have healthcare service at the same quality level as the DMV. Of course, those of us who want better will pay for private healthcare and still pay more in taxes -- just like we do with schools.
Regrettably this is not some isolated case. UK socialized medicine seems a lot like russian roulette / hit & miss. There are certainly many well intended care givers in the NHC system. Sadly, cases like this little boy's reveal the dark side of nationalized health care.
The emergency room doctor should have sewn up the cut with local anesthetic. Only with socialized medicine would you have hospitalization and operating room for a simple cut finger.
The only thing I can think of, is that if the tendons were lacerated. Could be, since they called in reconstructive surgeons. In delicate surgeries requiring nerve and/or tendon repair, a paralytic is needed (general anesthesia) to prevent twitching or moving during the surgery.
What a horror story. I can't believe they were reusing intubation equipment like that. Just one of the many reasons "foreign" health care is cheaper than the US, is because items they routinely reuse over and over, we toss after one use.
And, Drs who refused or skirted the system were to be socked with ONEROUS penalties. Not nice.
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