Emergency Care
5 Sep, 07 | by Ian Wacogne
In a tertiary care paediatric emergency department in Western Australia, an increased numbers of consultants occurred over the same period as an improvement in a number of parameters including complaints, waiting time and admission rates. Here.
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
Hi Ian
I was avoiding work, and having to read the Jan issue, when I noticed
“In a tertiary care paediatric emergency department in Western Australia, an increased numbers of **consultants** occurred over the same period as an improvement in a number of parameters including complaints, waiting time and admission rates. ”
Is that right, or should it be CONSULTATIONS ? Never know, with these fuddy-duddy consultants, things may slow up and get wrong …
bphillips
January 4th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Hi Bob
So much for “NOT FOR PUBLICATION”. Anyway I don’t think many of us fuddy-duddy consultants know about these new-fangled blogs. You’ll probably get away with it.
Matthew
Matthew Babirecki
January 4th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Ah, so much for this fuddy duddy consultant. Perhaps I shouldn’t be allowed behind the driving wheel of a blog if I can’t tell my “approved” button from my “unapproved”, eh? So, yes, my apologies.
Originally I responded direct to Bob. (We read each other’s blogs and often leave comments “not for publication” - with me it is usually not making sense, with Bob it is usually his punctuation…) To open out things a bit, here’s some further explanation.
There are two important points to the rather dense way I’ve written this post.
Firstly, the authors of this interesting study have demonstrated that their complaints fell at the same time their number of consultants went up. They’ve been prevented, by the editors I think, from using the old post hoc ergo propter hoc - “after this then because of this” link - causality. But we’re obviously meant to infer it… And so, in my clumsy way I was trying not to infer it.
Secondly, what do we think? When I was an SHO and then a registrar I was pretty sure that consultants got in the way. Now I’m less sure, and perhaps I’m headed towards the opposite view. We had a Christmas Debate at Birmingham Children’s Hospital last month, along the lines of “This House Believes that Junior Doctors are Supernumerary and Should be Phased Out”. I’m pleased to say that the motion was defeated - not least because I was opposing it (tongue firmly in cheek, of course). But it does make you think…
iwacogne
January 6th, 2008 at 5:54 pm