Knab Site

[Ghostrider]

Seriously?  A new hospital?

 

You chaps do not know you are born.

Go to any hospital in London and what you have here in Shetland is incredible.  Ok, so not brand new, but amazing by any UK standards and it works as a hospital.

 

In what context are you saying this? Regardless of how well or otherwise the hospital does what it does, the fact of the matter is, it does not a lot of very much of anything. Its a 'patch 'em up and pass 'em on' kinda place along with being a glorified hospice.

 

 

Forty years ago going off isle for medical care was the reserve of the unlucky few who required very specialised or complex treatment, and going off isle to see a specialist was unheard of, yet today both are daily routine and commonplace.

 

The patient travel budget is a millstone that continues to grow, and carting ill people around, especially for hundred of miles is a highly questionable exercise with regard to the health and well-being of patients. It is however unfortnately necessary as very, very little within our hospital has kept up with advances in medical treatments and procedures since the place opened, unless for one or two exceptions it has been treading water. Its no wonder some much has to be done elsewhere, and specialists refuse to visit, the facilities either aren't here to do it, or what is would be like trying to do the Tour de France on a penny farthing.

 

A new modern building equipped with as much modern equipment as is practical to invest in given our population would allow more procedures to once again be performed locally, and many of the specialists who at the moment refuse to come here to undertake consultations/examinations would no longer have the excuse they were refusing on the grounds there were no factilities here. Yes, of course, some unfortunate patients will always have to travel, its not realistic to expect everything to be done locally, but surely the humane and financially prudent way forward is to maximise as far as is practical what can be done locally.

 

It would be great, and much cheaper, if the current building could be modernised and upgraded back up to providing the level of service it did when it opened and for 20-25 years thereafter, but I don't believe thats either realistic or cost effective. The building has had water ingress issues sporadically from day 1, its nearly 60 years old, its too small for what it would need to contain these days, and its already on a heavily over-congested site which is hell on wheels to access/exit.

 

London, or most other places in the UK, even Orkney, have alternative, more modern and better equipped hospitals available that can be reached far more quickly and easily than we have, what we have locally has to reflect that reality, and it isn't, nor has it for the last 20+ years.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Ghostrider

[MuckleJoannie]

Medicine has changed a lot over the past 40 years. My dad was still practising then. He qualified as a doctor in the era of Doctor Finlay's Casebook. Nowadays the treatments are a lot more complex and hospital doctors are more specialised. It is difficult to find a surgeon who is happy to fix a broken leg in the morning and take out an appendix in the afternoon. 

[Ghostrider]

^ Maybe they need to offer better money to get the person they need.

 

When they're paying Loganair/Flybe/Northlink/whoever return fares daily day for folk to go to Aberdeen to have a two minute check over of something, and be told "Yea, you're coming on fine, come back and let me see you in 3/6/whatever months", and the only reason on the table is the "lack of proper facilities" for it not being done here, it shouldn't be rocket science to figure how to make the number work so that we're quids in on the deal.

[bug]

Litigation v ligetures. Janet will be spinning.

[MuckleJoannie]

A lot of the two minute consultations could be done by a tele conference. The equipment is available in the Gilbert Bain and in Aberdeen but the consultants in Aberdeen refuse to use it.

[Ghostrider]

^ Why. What's their problem? Complaints about the equipment either this end, or their end. Complaints about the quality of staff they have to engage with this end. Or just some whim on their part.

 

Surely, if NHS Grampian staff won't provide this service, NHS Shetland should be looking to contract the work out to someone else who will. Its not like they're compelled to use Aberdeen for everything, and epecially teleconferencing, which by its very nature could be done with a suitably qualified conultant in a rocket between here and Mars.