Hospital admins and medical f***-ups

The Canberra Times has reported that the ACT Coroner is investigating the death of a Canberra Hospital patient who died after an operation was performed on the wrong body part.

What sort of monumental fuck up must have occurred at Canberra Hospital that resulted in someone being operated on the wrong side of their body? That is nuts. That is one mistake that doctors and nurses, who are human, are not allowed to make. I'm going to blame the hospital administrators, because pulling a long stream of paperwork from their arse is what public servants do, and screwing up said paperwork is, coincidentally, what public servants also do.

I think we can all agree that doctors and nurses (the medical professionals, not the "kids" game) are pretty friggin' amazing.  Pay them whatever they want, I say.  And stop bashing on them, because they do an incredible job.  They save lives.  When was the last time I saved a life?  The closest I get to a medical emergency in my workplace is when I whimper for hours from a unsutured papercut from a particularly vicious piece of A4 (ah, geez, touchwood!!). 

Doctors and nurses have to deal with the public when they are at their sickest, crankiest and most unconscious, and that alone warrants a hefty pay rise.

Surgeons are already well paid, which is probably why we don't see many living on the streets or at the Occupy protests with the dole-bludging losers.  I suspect the latter is because they work for a living.  But surgeons creep me out a little bit, given that they are basically knife-wielding maniacs who are allowed to wear masks when performing their wallet-ectomies.  We happily entrust these people to make sure we wake up on the other side.  Creepy when you think about it.  But, yes indeed, they deserve more money too, because they save lives. 

While on the subject of hospitals, how tops are their emergency rooms?  At Canberra Hospital, you are generally just grateful for any medical care you receive, because after sitting in the waiting room next to some kid coughing their contagions directly into your face for five hours, you wish you were dead anyway.  And I love how you are never far from a toxic waste bin.  Because they just scream healing to me.  

It's fascinating that the public get all persnickety when they have to wait a few hours at hospital for medical attention, yet some of the most popular televisions shows revolve around hospitals and police stations where the workers are forever involved in personal dramas rathere than doing actual work.  It's a mad, mad world.