Re. Information from specialists and consultants.

[Guest guest]

and ,

I have never posted to this group before, but as this subject is one that I know about, I felt that I must add my twopennyworth.

I have spent all of my working life selling drugs to doctors, both G.P.s and consultants... and am still doing it, so I think I know what makes them tick. In my opinion it is almost always the system that they work in that is the problem, not really the doctors themselves.

A Consultant does not get any more pay for working hard than for taking it easy, so human nature being what it is, many of them opt for not working harder than they have to. They have more patients ( by a long way) than their European and US colleagues, and they are paid less than either European or US doctors. If our doctors were paid per patient that they deal with, then you would see a huge rise in the numbers of patients seen. If you give a dog a biscuit, he will do a trick, the more biscuits, the more tricks. Also if patients were free to go to the doctor that they like best and that they feel that they can trust, you would see a much better level of treatment. Of course this is not politically acceptable by any of the major parties so that it will not be in the foreseeable future.

G.P.s are paid rather differently, they are paid for the number of patients that are on their list, not the number of patients that they see. They do not get anything for actually seeing a patient. So the optimum situation for a G.P is to have 3500 patients on his list, who do not have anything wrong with them. They do get paid for attending "updating" courses but this is quite a small amount in relation to the pay they get for having a large list.

With regard to 's comments about the uro who has taken him off the telephone list. I would guess that this is because the uro thinks that he is right about the amount of information that is given to patients and that is wrong. I have found surgeons of any speciality tend to be arrogant. I don't mean this disparagingly, but they are trained to be firmly in charge of their operating theatres... what they say goes, it has to be that way. Unfortunately they often carry this attitude into their consultations, and so come into conflict with the patients themselves and people like us.

I think that it is our job to be a friend and advisor, to patients who are totally bewildered by the diagnosis they have just been given, in order that they can make sense of their decisions. I fully appreciate that this will be impossible if the consultant will not refer patients to us, but there are other ways of killing a cat.

Kindest regards to all

Ward.