February 19, 2006
Looked after by the staff of St.Elsewhere….
After the spill in Thailand and the subsequent greatest bruise of all time, I had said that I was going to remain injury free in 2006 – with this 15 inch right angle scar (25 metal staples included) that ambition has now gone out the window and I’ll have to keep my head down from now on as regularity of injury is picking up a pace it seems – still, no broken bones yet.
Touch wood.
Thankfully I was with Anna last weekend and although she is now a high powered business bunny of note in the city of big smoke, she possibly may have missed her calling in life as the greatest doctor of all time – due to her mother being one of the greatest nurses on the planet, a vested interest in medicine and a stint working in a pharmacy, when my appendicitis came a calling she pretty much clocked it at the first time of asking - although I claimed I’d sleep it off she was fairly insistent that we would be needing to take a walk round the corner to Kingston hospital and by 2am with a pounding pain shooting up my right side – I was no longer arguing.
Every so often the National health does get a kicking in the press over here in UK – but I’ve always been fairly well looked after it has to be said – if anything I think there should be more direction and encouragement given to kids to look to a career in the health industry rather than to take up easy options of half baked former poly-tech business and media courses that ultimately lack content and meaning and are often cynical scams to extract tuition fee’s from students destined to drop out by Christmas (Universities being profit chasing as well as educating these days)
As far as I understand it (and my brothers and sisters across the pond please educate the finer details if necessary) having anything to do with the health profession in North America means that you will be fairly well minted for the rest of your days – over here it seems that you are more or less laying yourself at the feet of goodwill and under appreciation – worked to the bone and not paid anywhere near what you would be if you used the same amount of brain matter in the commercial world – you are making the sacrifice for the greater good and choosing the path that will help others rather more significantly than it will help you - and also making substantial bets with the rest of your days of learning that you will stay the course and see the end of the education process.
Kingston hospital was clean efficient and well run – you got three meals a day, a remote controlled bed, call buttons, drips, bed pans and a TV attached to a movable arm behind the bed that had cable, internet, phone and arcade games. There were always enough nurses running around, doctors gave you the impression they knew what they were talking about and no one was sitting around in agony waiting days on end to have overdue operations.
Most of the folk that dealt with me weren’t from the UK though – it was very much a United nations of the world effort in there- Nurses and doctors from the Philippines, Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, Korea, South Africa and India helped me through my day – and not in a “my family lived here for 50 years and I’m all British as much as you” kind of way – they were working over here after studying and working in their own countries and then getting asked or accepted to come work upon UK shores. There were indeed British doctors and nurses around the place - but they were in the minority and in positions of seniority and experience rather than the make up of the majority.
Which I thought was fantastic – it seemed that work permits were being issued to fill genuine gaps in the market where there was a lack of suitable applicants from the home grown education system – either in numbers of level of achievement or application.
When it comes to who tends my bed in hospital, I don’t care where the person is from that is doing the tending – just as long as whoever it is knows what they are doing and that they are doing it in good time – that’s all that’s important when it comes down to it – but that’s the thing – if it’s a wage and career that is good enough for folk from far-a-field to fly all the way over here to take up – why doesn’t anyone from these shores seem to want the job first?
Money is the obvious answer but I don’t think it necessarily all comes down to wage – many of my friends are simply looking for direction in life – a career they can identify and work at to give them a path through the years to come – the health industry is never really sold via the education system – math’s, science, biology – all tough subjects and then to excel at all of them and follow all three to phd and master levels – it’s no wonder many flock elsewhere when the path is fraught with a high % of failure, huge workloads, long hours and little financial reward – but stay the course and you’ll be one from a pool of only a few rather than the many – job security.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think doctors and nurses are all earning minimum wage and doing the job out of love of the practice – sure, if you get to the end of the education I’d expect you’d be earning 28’000 to 30’000 as a top level nurse and up to 50’000 as a doctor – but then again a doctor is one hell of a clever cookie cruncher – if you are clever enough to cut someone open and fix what’s wrong before sowing them back up and sending them on their merry way – chances are you are clever enough to do anything you set your mind to – and many of those alternative choices will pay out much more than the ten hour shifts at the local NHS Hospital.
So I wonder is enough planning, thought and funding being put into our NHS and education systems if we don’t seem to have that many of our own doctors and nurses? There’s always want for more I guess – there’s always clamor for better funding, conditions, equipment, hospitals - but then again the other side of that is that I got looked after pretty well by the united nations of healthcare – and the reason that they were working here is that compared to their own countries, Britain offers better wage and living conditions for their profession – our economy being the reason behind this – our economy that is running so strongly thanks to all those folk who chose not to be doctors and nurses and work in the business sector perhaps?
Folk like Anna?
Touch wood.
Thankfully I was with Anna last weekend and although she is now a high powered business bunny of note in the city of big smoke, she possibly may have missed her calling in life as the greatest doctor of all time – due to her mother being one of the greatest nurses on the planet, a vested interest in medicine and a stint working in a pharmacy, when my appendicitis came a calling she pretty much clocked it at the first time of asking - although I claimed I’d sleep it off she was fairly insistent that we would be needing to take a walk round the corner to Kingston hospital and by 2am with a pounding pain shooting up my right side – I was no longer arguing.
Every so often the National health does get a kicking in the press over here in UK – but I’ve always been fairly well looked after it has to be said – if anything I think there should be more direction and encouragement given to kids to look to a career in the health industry rather than to take up easy options of half baked former poly-tech business and media courses that ultimately lack content and meaning and are often cynical scams to extract tuition fee’s from students destined to drop out by Christmas (Universities being profit chasing as well as educating these days)
As far as I understand it (and my brothers and sisters across the pond please educate the finer details if necessary) having anything to do with the health profession in North America means that you will be fairly well minted for the rest of your days – over here it seems that you are more or less laying yourself at the feet of goodwill and under appreciation – worked to the bone and not paid anywhere near what you would be if you used the same amount of brain matter in the commercial world – you are making the sacrifice for the greater good and choosing the path that will help others rather more significantly than it will help you - and also making substantial bets with the rest of your days of learning that you will stay the course and see the end of the education process.
Kingston hospital was clean efficient and well run – you got three meals a day, a remote controlled bed, call buttons, drips, bed pans and a TV attached to a movable arm behind the bed that had cable, internet, phone and arcade games. There were always enough nurses running around, doctors gave you the impression they knew what they were talking about and no one was sitting around in agony waiting days on end to have overdue operations.
Most of the folk that dealt with me weren’t from the UK though – it was very much a United nations of the world effort in there- Nurses and doctors from the Philippines, Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, Korea, South Africa and India helped me through my day – and not in a “my family lived here for 50 years and I’m all British as much as you” kind of way – they were working over here after studying and working in their own countries and then getting asked or accepted to come work upon UK shores. There were indeed British doctors and nurses around the place - but they were in the minority and in positions of seniority and experience rather than the make up of the majority.
Which I thought was fantastic – it seemed that work permits were being issued to fill genuine gaps in the market where there was a lack of suitable applicants from the home grown education system – either in numbers of level of achievement or application.
When it comes to who tends my bed in hospital, I don’t care where the person is from that is doing the tending – just as long as whoever it is knows what they are doing and that they are doing it in good time – that’s all that’s important when it comes down to it – but that’s the thing – if it’s a wage and career that is good enough for folk from far-a-field to fly all the way over here to take up – why doesn’t anyone from these shores seem to want the job first?
Money is the obvious answer but I don’t think it necessarily all comes down to wage – many of my friends are simply looking for direction in life – a career they can identify and work at to give them a path through the years to come – the health industry is never really sold via the education system – math’s, science, biology – all tough subjects and then to excel at all of them and follow all three to phd and master levels – it’s no wonder many flock elsewhere when the path is fraught with a high % of failure, huge workloads, long hours and little financial reward – but stay the course and you’ll be one from a pool of only a few rather than the many – job security.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think doctors and nurses are all earning minimum wage and doing the job out of love of the practice – sure, if you get to the end of the education I’d expect you’d be earning 28’000 to 30’000 as a top level nurse and up to 50’000 as a doctor – but then again a doctor is one hell of a clever cookie cruncher – if you are clever enough to cut someone open and fix what’s wrong before sowing them back up and sending them on their merry way – chances are you are clever enough to do anything you set your mind to – and many of those alternative choices will pay out much more than the ten hour shifts at the local NHS Hospital.
So I wonder is enough planning, thought and funding being put into our NHS and education systems if we don’t seem to have that many of our own doctors and nurses? There’s always want for more I guess – there’s always clamor for better funding, conditions, equipment, hospitals - but then again the other side of that is that I got looked after pretty well by the united nations of healthcare – and the reason that they were working here is that compared to their own countries, Britain offers better wage and living conditions for their profession – our economy being the reason behind this – our economy that is running so strongly thanks to all those folk who chose not to be doctors and nurses and work in the business sector perhaps?
Folk like Anna?
Spo | February 19, 2006
There are no comments yet for Looked after by the staff of St.Elsewhere….
Comment on Looked after by the staff of St.Elsewhere….