NHS patients should 'adopt American attitude'

Daily Mail ^ | 25 January 2014 | Suzannah Hills

[managusta]

British patients should adopt more 'pushy' American attitudes with their doctors to get drugs they are entitled to, the head of the NHS rationing body has said.

Professor David Haslam, chairman of the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice), said that patients need to see themselves as 'equal partners' with doctors to get the treatment they need.

And he explained that after working as a doctor near an American air force base in Cambridgeshire, he noticed that U.S. patients had a less deferential approach than local residents.

Earlier this week a Government report found that a third of patients with kidney cancer and one in three motor neurone disease sufferers are not receiving the drugs they need.

Health experts warned that the research by the Health and Social Care Information Centre had exposed an 'endemic and disastrous postcode lottery' of care within the health service.

Prof Haslam said an investigation was under way to uncover why so many patients are not being prescribed medications.

[managusta]

"Americans tended to want to know more about their treatment than the British who tend to be much more "thank you doctor, I will take that",' he told the Daily Telegraph."

The difference between subjects and citizens.

[Diogenesis]

What difference does it make now?

MILLIONS of Americans,
the non-EXEMPT and non-Moslem,
now have lost their insurances, their doctors,
their rights, their access to care, and
their hope.

Meanwhile the hated, EXEMPT US Congress remains
whoring, drunk, Ambien-laced, treasonous,
and laughing on the way to their (paid-off) banks.

[C210N]

The difference between subjects and citizens...

As those subjects become even more like subjects, and the citizens become more like subjects.

The US just has not become accustomed enough yet to adopt the British attitudes. Give us time...

[CPOSharky]

When some “professional” calls me by my first name, I return the favor. When he then informs me that it is “Doctor” or some such, then I tell him that he may call me “Chief” or “Mister.”

(Just remember who is paying who and that makes an employer - employee relationship.)

[The Antiyuppie]

I also have no particular reverence for doctors. Remember, what do you call the doctor who graduated at the bottom of the class? Doctor.

[binreadin]

The article makes and excellent point. I was visiting a cousin and his wife in Canada a few years ago. She had just had a biopsy, the first week of May. She was not notified until the end of June that she had cancer, and she did not get to start chemo until mid August. I would have been camped out at the Pathologist’s front door, ditto for the Oncologist, if I had to face that wait and uncertainty. My cousin and his wife, however, were resigned to their fate and didn’t see any problem with those timeframes. They were reluctant to rock the boat and seem to be demanding special treatment.

[jimtorr]

I hear you. Sometimes, though, it’s not that simple.

I had a colo-rectal tumor in 1996. All tests were inconclusive, biopsy, CT scan, barium enema and more. The only doc who insisted on colon cancer was the surgeon, naturally, so he could cut me open. I opted to go with his advice.

Good thing, too. He found a tumor the size of a baseball at the colo-rectal curve. The tumor itself turned out to be benign, but colon cancer cells were found in 3 of the 7 lymph nodes examined.

The surgeon never bragged about how he was right. I heard this from the oncologist, who admitted that he had been wrong.