What do medical staff and airline staff have in common?
What separates them is that airline staff do not train for their jobs for five years, yet have the safety of dozens, if not hundreds, of passengers in their hands. Doctors train for five years in medical school, then go through several years in junior positions which are essentially learning-on-the-job roles. And whatever they do wrong, 300 people will not get blown out of the sky.
What joins them is that they act like a law unto themselves, and feel entitled to disregard written agreements and assurances. Musicians are told they can take their instruments into the cabin, while disabled travellers are told they can travel … and they turn up and find that their instruments have to be thrown into the hold, or they need a chaperone (which they didn’t last time) or just can’t travel, and the written assurance means nothing. If someone requires a particular, unusual drug, and their clinicians know that, and it’s written on their notes in big letters and they even have a bracelet on and a firm promise that they won’t be given the drug that caused them a stroke in the past but the unusual drug nobody else has … and the patient is under anaesthetic and can’t object, they give them the drug they’re allergic to anyway.
Patients often don’t like taking these drugs. It’s not only doctors who think they’re “dirty”. They have no reason to get sniffy. Patients take them because they have no other choice.
I don’t like keeping a heroin-copycat in the house. I live in fear that my amazing children will somehow find a syringe lying about or a broken glass ampoule top. My GP and I have an understanding. I only ask for a script when things are desperate … — Sue Marsh, April 2012
I hate taking morphine (its actually pure - legal! - heroin) & I know my body is now dependent on it cos I get bad withdrawals if the pump stops going thru 4 some reason. BUT, I couldnt stay the way I was - curled up, crying, in agony, 24/7 - & Id tried literally evry other painkiller going — Lynn Gilderdale, March 2006
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