I got involved in a bit of a discussion about this article today on the BBC news website. In a nutshell it says statistics show that there is a spike in death rates at the weekend in NHS hospitals. I would love to know if such figures are available for NICU but doubt there are. The main reason for this is that there continues to be a culture of "normal hours of work" for senior consultants, Monday - Friday 9-5.
I find this baffling and somewhat infuriating, that younger, newly qualified doctors, are supposed to do all the difficult hours, with little experience, and often little sleep, and few opportunities for quality supervision, whilst the consultant who has "done their time" can work "normal hours", medicine just isn't like that.
I remember always feeling nervous on Friday afternoons, when the unit was slightly less staffed, and there were less experienced doctors around. I always hated it when blood tests would come back on a Friday and Joseph would need a transfusion, or new antibiotics, I could just see things going pear shaped when there wasn't anyone experienced around to sort it out.
And indeed, I recall a weekend where things were dreadful (and the consultant came in immediately I might add) but there weren't the additional support staff around and some facilities were closed, and I could see the registrar becoming more and more stressed. On this weekend it was all hands on deck, helping one another out.
And one of the doctors on Twitter suggested that consolidating services in large hospitals is the answer, instead of having lots of small units dotted about, and that the problem is that "we the public" see closures of units and consolidation as "cuts" rather than improvements.
I do accept consolidation and modernisation is necessary to a degree, and our local hospital has been a victim of this, and the unit where Joseph was born and raised will be closed. His (@DrGrumble) feeling is that in larger units this will change, and there will be more experienced staff on duty at unsociable times, which I truly hope is the case. However I have some serious concerns about this "bigger is better" philosophy and wonder if its truly what will happen. I guess for our area we will only know once it starts unfolding.
However, weekends in NICU wasn't all bad. Often times I'd be given more freedom to get Joseph in and out of his incubator on my own. I would get "forgotten" about and Joseph would have longer kangaroo cuddles. An obvious benefit of weekends was that my husband was around, and we could tend to Joseph's needs together, and have time out together, I wouldn't have to sit on the Kylie Hodges memorial bench, outside the nurses quarters!
Every weekend I still spend a minute or so reminiscing about our time on the unit, and the excitement of driving up together to see "our magic boy".
I find this baffling and somewhat infuriating, that younger, newly qualified doctors, are supposed to do all the difficult hours, with little experience, and often little sleep, and few opportunities for quality supervision, whilst the consultant who has "done their time" can work "normal hours", medicine just isn't like that.
I remember always feeling nervous on Friday afternoons, when the unit was slightly less staffed, and there were less experienced doctors around. I always hated it when blood tests would come back on a Friday and Joseph would need a transfusion, or new antibiotics, I could just see things going pear shaped when there wasn't anyone experienced around to sort it out.
And indeed, I recall a weekend where things were dreadful (and the consultant came in immediately I might add) but there weren't the additional support staff around and some facilities were closed, and I could see the registrar becoming more and more stressed. On this weekend it was all hands on deck, helping one another out.
And one of the doctors on Twitter suggested that consolidating services in large hospitals is the answer, instead of having lots of small units dotted about, and that the problem is that "we the public" see closures of units and consolidation as "cuts" rather than improvements.
I do accept consolidation and modernisation is necessary to a degree, and our local hospital has been a victim of this, and the unit where Joseph was born and raised will be closed. His (@DrGrumble) feeling is that in larger units this will change, and there will be more experienced staff on duty at unsociable times, which I truly hope is the case. However I have some serious concerns about this "bigger is better" philosophy and wonder if its truly what will happen. I guess for our area we will only know once it starts unfolding.
However, weekends in NICU wasn't all bad. Often times I'd be given more freedom to get Joseph in and out of his incubator on my own. I would get "forgotten" about and Joseph would have longer kangaroo cuddles. An obvious benefit of weekends was that my husband was around, and we could tend to Joseph's needs together, and have time out together, I wouldn't have to sit on the Kylie Hodges memorial bench, outside the nurses quarters!
Every weekend I still spend a minute or so reminiscing about our time on the unit, and the excitement of driving up together to see "our magic boy".