Tuesday 18th November 2014- The Guardian: One in six GP surgeries in England ‘at risk of offering patients poor care’

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‘One in six GP surgeries in England is at risk of offering patients poor care, including trouble getting an appointment and being given out of date medicine, the NHS care watchdog has warned.

About 1,200 practices potentially put patients either at “risk” or “elevated risk” through inadequate care, according to the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

In its first assessment of all 7,661 GP surgeries in England, the regulator warned that while many are looking after patients well, 1,200 (16%) pose such a concern that they will be visited and assessed under its tough new inspection in the next few months’.

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One in six GP surgeries in England ‘at risk of offering patients poor care’

Saturday 1st November 2014- The Guardian: My wife had a stroke after giving birth

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‘“They said, ‘Your wife’s had a stroke,’” recalls Adam. “In that one moment, my whole world dropped away.”

Adam rushed back to St George’s hospital in Tooting, south London, near their family home in Clapham. His wife, Mia Sarjeant, was already in the operating theatre having brain surgery. He was taken aside by one of the doctors for the first of many talks. “Basically, the one where you are told that there is a high chance your wife is going to die,” says Adam.

Struggling to take it all in, it dawned on him that he had been left literally holding the baby. Leaving Mia in the neurological intensive care unit he set off on the long walk back across the hospital to the delivery ward to collect his day-old daughter. “I felt sick,” he says. “I tried to gather my thoughts and myself. I was on autopilot.”’

‘Each morning, Adam would get Esther up, change and feed her, put her into a cot and wheel her over to intensive care. At first the doctors wouldn’t admit the baby, in case of infection, but Adam pressed until they relented. “When I finally got in, I put the baby on top of Mia,” he says. “She was all wired up, unable to communicate, but there’s always a mother-baby connection. I felt that was hugely important.”’

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My wife had a stroke after giving birth

Saturday 1st November 2014- The Telegraph: Doctors refusing to prescribe statins

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‘Two in three family GPs refuse to follow NHS advice to give statins to 40 per cent of adults, survey finds’.

‘Family doctors said guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), advising 40 per cent of adults to take the pills, were “simplistic”. They insisted they would not allow the “mass medicalisation” of the public.

The guidelines, published in July, say drugs to protect against strokes and heart attacks should be offered to anyone with a one in 10 chance of developing heart disease within a decade.

It means 17.5 million adults, including most men aged over 60 and women over 65, are now eligible for the drugs, which cost less than 10p a day’.

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Doctors refusing to prescribe statins

Saturday 1st November 2014- The Guardian: Trust me, I’m a doctor: the case of the rogue spinal surgeon

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Anaesthetist and manslaughter convict Dr Richard Kaul has been brought to light after claiming to be a spine surgeon and having performed numerous spine operations only to be sued by his patients for negligence and deviation from standard care.

‘It didn’t take long for Richard Kaul’s spine surgery practice in the middle-class New Jersey suburb of Pompton Lakes to turn a profit. The Indian-born, British-raised doctor had been performing procedures in small surgeries for a number of years before he opened his own place in 2011. By 2012, he owned a $2m home in New Jersey, a Manhattan penthouse and an $8.3m brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side, which boasted a soundproof media room, three terraces and nine fireplaces’.

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Trust me, I’m a doctor: the case of the rogue spinal surgeon