Splinter of the Mind’s Foot
According to The Times today, “HOSPITAL dramas such as Casualty and ER have produced a new brand of quack medical experts ready to pounce at the first sign of an emergency”.
Well, thank God for Casualty, then, because some of the real medical professionals are a waste of space.
On Monday afternoon, Olya managed to get a splinter of glass in her foot. She went to the GP near
our home, but he wouldn’t touch it. He said he didn’t have any sterile equipment, and told her
to go to A&E!
At A&E, the triage nurse said he could try to remove the splinter, but he wasn’t really
supposed to and it might be better to wait for a doctor. Olya took the hint and waited, only realising what a bad decision this was when, two hours later, they announced that the waiting time for a doctor was now four hours, and likely to increase
with every new trauma patient who was admitted.
Wisely she decided to come home and try again the next morning, when an EPN was available: the splinter (extremely well embedded after all the to-ing and fro-ing) was eventually found and extracted, and obligatory tetanus shot given.
All that pallaver because a so-called Doctor wouldn’t even attempt to remove a splinter - something thousands of parents and grandparents do for their kids every day. It’s even in the First Aid Manual, along with a procedure to sterilise tweezers with… a match; something that’s considered simple enough for First Aiders to do, is, apparently, too tricky for a doctor to attempt. Olya would no doubt have extracted it herself if it wasn’t in such a hard-to-reach place.
Over the years I’ve come to expect precious little from the Fairweather House surgery, but this really takes the cake. My advice to any patients of Doctor Rosenthal and her hopeless team is: don’t get ill.
Try also to avoid walking on broken glass in your flip-flops…