The Canberra rumour mill has picked up a murmur that one WA Liberal could be in big trouble for some questionable use of campaign funds… funds which were not his to start with. Party officials are apparently trying to get the funds back before it becomes public. Given that one of his colleagues seems keen to push the story along that seems unlikely.
RE: Story on Capolingua. She is destroying the AMA and they just elected her for another term. On the other hand Mukesh Haikerwal was a wonderful representative. The AMA is a Drs Union and as such will agitate for what is best for their members. But there are ways to go about doing. The only position that really p-sses me off is the idea that we can meet health care needs by substituting with nurses. Their degree is three years. Doctors, depending on state, must do a minimum of 6 but generally 7 and a half years. Then they must specialise – minimum of 5. They then earn 25 dollars an hour for the first four years. Nurses get more and shift allowances etc. My husband decided at the age of 25 to become a Dr. He was a Nurse. To action this has cost us over one million dollars in HECS fees, lost wages etc. My point is that Nurses are not Doctors — if they want to be then make the same sacrifices and study medicine.
Did anyone else pick up this priceless exchange in the NSW upper house yesterday?
National MP Duncan Gay: I wish to make a personal explanation. Members of the House will recall that during a previous debate I indicated that councillor Bruce Miller, the very hardworking and well-respected President of the Local Government and Shires Association, was a member of the Labor Party. Councillor Miller has indicated to me that he is very disappointed to be named as a member of the Labor Party. Who can blame him, after what the Labor Party has done to local government? Although councillor Miller is from the opposite side of politics to me, he is someone I hold in the highest esteem.
Treasurer and acting Leader of the House Michael Costa: What’s on the other side to you?
Gay: You. Councillor Miller’s request is a proper one. If I inadvertently misled the House as to his membership of the Australian Labor Party, I am more than happy to correct it. He will be pleased, as would most people in NSW, that he is known as not being a member of the Labor Party.
I agree with the Registered Nurse, the doctors wife has completely missed the point. A medical degree is 6 years (5 at a couple of universities) or 4 if you do a post graduate course (after another 3 year degree) and a nursing degree is 3 years. But lets be honest and compare apples with apples.
After the basic degree both must do a year of supervised practice (internship for doctors, graduate nurse for nursing). A doctor can then specialise, which takes between 4 or 5 years for most (including general practice). 6 years uni, 2 years intern/resident, 5 years specialist training (which is mostly done in an apprenticeship on the job training style) makes 13 years.
After uni and a grad year to become a nurse practitioner you must do a masters degree (2 or 3 years), have 3 to 5 years clinical experience and then another 2 years doing the practitioner training – 3+1+2+5+2 = 13, the same 13 that a doctor has to have.
Now I did the 6 years at medical school, then I farted about for a while deciding what I wanted to do and finally started anaesthetic training after 6 years, 2 years of which I spent as a country GP. I then took a further 7 years to gain specialist fellowships in both anaesthesia and intensive care – a total of 19 years. A long haul, far too long to do some of the sort of work a GP does – write referrals to specialists and repeat prescriptions. This is simple stuff and does not need a medical degree, it is best separated off and the more difficult work can then have more attention devoted to it from the docs.
The docs wife is also wrong. The AMA does not support nurse practitioners one little bit, they’ll die in a ditch to stop it and will want to cut my nuts off for supporting the opposition. It’s all about preserving the mystique of doctors power and authority over the community and the nursing profession in particular. It’s also about trying to preserve doctors incomes (what any good union should do for it’s members).
The doctor’s wife misses the point entirely. The simple fact is that you don’t need 12+ years training to address many of the health care needs that are currently the exclusive domain of doctors. The doctor’s wife may feel that her husband deserves a substantial return on his career investment, but the fact is that 12 years training doesn’t guarantee that you are always the most efficient provider of care… At last we have a Health Minister who is not afraid to state the obvious.
I agree. And great work by the Health Minister.
At the Uni of Sydney, it takes only 3 years to get a medical degree (students require a bachelor degree in anything to apply).
But time spent at uni and the money spent on a course etc are beside the point. Having studied medicine myself and having doctors in the family, one has to say that there is no benefit in perpetuating the deeply ingrained and flawed medical hierarchy. Especially the master-slave relationship of doctors and nurses that some still want to continue.
A long time ago, medical and other professionals were ‘educated’ in the sense that other workers (eg nurses) were not. This is clearly no longer the case.
Nurses and other paramedicals are more than capable of rendering medical treatment and prevention in many cases. In fact, they are often better than doctors with little or no experience of a situation or procedure.
There is nothing magical about a bachelor degree in medicine. (And why is Brendan Nelson called Dr Nelson where it is irrelevant, but it’s not Diplomat Rudd, Lawyer Gillard, Engineer Jones, etc?)
Medical personnel should be treating people in the best medical manner possible, not according to some universal, rigid and outmoded set of position descriptions. Nor with doctors trying to engineer demarcation disputes.
Obviously, where medical practitioners refuse to work in some areas, despite large inducements, someone has to do the work. Simple as that.
The medical system is not working now, and is getting steadily worse. The whole edifice needs to be changed to reflect modern medical challenges.