My Authors
Read all threads
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.
#COVID19 is the Australian #SARS crisis that we missed out on 17 years ago due to pure luck. We now live in a post-SARS, post-COVID19 world and many things have to change, including how much redundancy and surge capacity we want to build into our health system.
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
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh.

Enjoying this thread?

Keep Current with Jason Chuen

Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!