David Rowe
By
Hazel Speed
Many will be relieved to learn that the proposed Junior Doctors’ strike in the UK has been averted – even if the next one scheduled does still goes ahead. At least for now, there is time for the BMA, Junior Doctors and their representatives to try and come to terms over the issues.
It is worth us all reading the Hippocratic Oath.
Some Doctors and Specialists still tell patients that although they may not be able to help they will not hinder within medical situations.
Those who have been good and professional personal carers also live by their Oath, be it a personal or Carers’ Oath.
Then carers who look after relatives have a one word Oath, that of “Love”.
We live in a 24 hr society, illness doesn’t know about weekends or shift changes, duty hours.
Not every individual has the luxury of striking, at least not in the safety of retaining their situation.
There are at least two sides to this argument (three, if one includes the patients), and from what is known by either individual experience for some, and/or trusted accounts, then it is true that sometimes there are no free beds, but other times people are deliberately refused discharge to play one system against the other. This may not be so in general but it has happened.
If the Oath is not one conducive to Junior Doctors’ conditions, and one’s Patients do not come first anymore because of the same then the BMA will have to either lose Doctors to the Profession or amend the Oath, but a 24 hr service 7 days a week has to be facilitated somehow.
How did GPs of former years go with patients in ambulances to the hospital, visit the patients whilst they were there for days or weeks, on more than one occasion, then visit them on the day they returned home? Albeit in relative terms, Doctors in Hospitals/GPs were just as busy in their day and age.
Agreed, the population has expanded and new conditions are known, but readers are invited to read the Hippocratic Oath for themselves and decide what they would do in these present circumstances.
The Junior Doctors and the BMA should also both remind themselves of the commitment therein.
On behalf of the patient, if you cannot help then do not hinder, and make your choices accordingly as your consciences dictate and before somebody may die.
Hazel Speed
Photo (c) Hazel Speed – used by kind permision to Tuck Magazine
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