Despite @JennyMikakos’ appalling disrespect of Victorian GPs, her statements in this #thread are correct. This signals a change in how we must approach potential illness at work as HCWs. Patients will need to understand when their appointments or surgery are cancelled. #covid19
Doctors are human too. Our health system is fragile and stretched to the limit by funding constraints, growth in disease burden, ageing population and unrealistic and unsustainable expectations of health outcomes.
The cost of efficiency and high healthcare availability is taxation, systematisation, centralisation, protocolisation, waiting lists, triage and strict severity criteria before conditions qualify for treatment.
These can sometimes conflict with our desire to provide doctor & patient choice and autonomy, maximal quality & quantity of life, best world-class service, latest technology, immediate service delivery, and geographically distributed care.
Our Australian healthcare system is the envy of the world. It’s pretty good but it’s not perfect. But remember that efficiency comes at the cost of redundancy. Health crises like #COVID19 require slack and redundancy to be managed effectively.
China has redundancy through sheer size of workforce — hospitals can be built, doctors from other provinces can be relocated. Singapore & Taiwan have capacity and redundancy through preparation and planning post-SARS.
That means understanding that in a post-#COVID19 world either we train & hire more doctors, nurses & other staff in order to be ready “just in case”, or we start accepting that your bunion surgery will be cancelled because your surgeon sneezed yesterday. Welcome. #BraveNewWorld
So as doctors we will keep working to keep you safe and healthy. But in order to keep doing that we need to keep healthy too. Unreasonable demands from hospitals, the health system, and patients make that hard. But now we’ve been threatened with public shaming there is no choice.
Public health doctors like @VictorianCHO, @annaliesevd and @peripatetical will continue to plan, communicate, & do an excellent job at co-ordinating the #covid19australia response. But @JennyMikakos’ #flabbergaslighting means we won’t be there for you, our patients, as much now.
If she knows what’s right then she will apologise. If not then you can help make her see. Sign the petition. chng.it/QGmJY9fYKX
