Posted on 08/12/2009 11:20:15 PM PDT by Maelstorm
The old folks better not be miserable and cranky.
Btw: Glad you caught that. You were the first. I figured someone would have already but it is early in the morning. Come to think of it I’d probably go to bed.
If this is what I remember from several weeks ago, this particular systematic failure was a result of the desperation of the NHS to hold on to any doctor it possibly can, no matter how incompetent, because they are so scarce. Surprise! we find that there are some real dummies in the system that won’t go away until forced as a result of tragedies like this.
The problem is usually in the government as I have observed directly incompetent staff seldom are removed even when something like this occurs. They are moved around, no one is found guilty of anything, usually it becomes a conspiracy of errors beyond anyone’s control then a year later they give themselves big pats on the back about how much they have improved even though they are still only slightly less incompetent than the year before. Not all bureaucrats are bad but this type of thing happens precisely because of the natural way that bureaucracies stagnate and bulwark themselves in ways to serve the bureaucracy not the patients or those delivering the care.
The idea that a baby was not examined simply because he was miserable and cranky? Just thinking of that is just horrifically numbing.
Yes, that is one more layer of mischief.
And, the government misrunning of the system is a reason why the doctors are scarce. The doctors rightly view the system as a kind of hell on earth. Good enough ones will travel to another country and practice there. Others will never exist because they were daunted at the prospect and chose different, less trammeled careers.
If you think the health staff are incompetent, just wait until all the staff are members of a federal union. Then they’ll be impossible to get rid of regardless how many lives they cost.
“’Miserable and cranky’ is a symptom for a child that young.”
This is correct for any child of Baby Peter’s age at death (17 months), and even more so for a child in whom there has been involvement of area social services due to a concern for abuse and neglect. Children of that age do have a very well-defined sense of personal space and will generally cry and fight vigorously against attempts to do a medical exam. However, when the child is so agitated before any examination has begun, that is a red flag for pain or severe illness. A child of that age should have every inch of his body examined by the physician, simply because the child cannot verbalize pain.
The baby had been taken to a pediatrician at a developmental center due to the concern for abuse. The doctor stated she didn’t do a full exam, but I wonder if she even touched the child. Most abused children are fairly thin...if she had examined his chest or back in any way she would not only have noticed bruises but could very likely have seen or felt the calluses formed by recent rib fractures in the early stages of healing. In an article I read, this doctor stated that Baby Peter looked no different from a child his age with a cold, and offered that he was sitting without support as evidence for that assertion. Since a child learns to sit without support at age six months, that Peter was doing so at age 17 months does not satisfy criteria for being developmentally appropriate much less free of abuse.
In short, while the health care and social workers who performed the more than 60 visits with the family in the months before Baby Peter died were nothing less than comletely inept, the physician who performed the exam days before Baby Peter died was grossly negligent.
And the worst offenders are promoted out of the department. Hey, is that how politicians get their jobs?
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