Monitor the GPs
‘‘Take care of God’s needy people and welcome strangers into your home.’’ The article on the report from the Health and Disability Commission concerning the more than 120 cancer patients who have died or been terminally ill in the past decade after doctors failed to pick up the disease earlier (May 1) shadows what happened to Suzee, my daughter.
During two years, her visits to five different GPs and ongoing misdiagnoses contributed to her ovarian cancer being diagnosed at Stage 3C.
GPs are quite rightly being blamed for their lack of professional skill when confronted by a patient exhibiting the same symptoms each time.
We have her medical records and only one, the last female doctor, who had seen the symptoms before, suspected ovarian cancer and sent her for a CA125 test.
Her symptoms were ignored up until then and she was variously sent home to rest, sent for a psychiatric report, and I have heard all this same treatment from other people who have also had their cancer symptoms similarly ignored.
If all the Health and Disability Commission can do is recommend GPs conduct more tests earlier, rather than take a watch and review approach, what does that tell the general public?
How much confidence does that instil in patients as they enter the consulting room?
GPs are not accountable for their incompetence. It is like a secret society. Every other business, trade, profession, job has its members complying with standards and accountability.
It is a lottery to go to a GP in New Zealand as the patient knows nothing about the competence of the doctor they are seeing.
In China and United States patients don’t spend time explaining symptoms. They are subjected to a battery of scientific tests which bring up a range of results.
The Health and Disability Commission has a responsibility to make wider stronger recommendations and if they are unable to do that they should be disbanded.
There must be a separate entity, such as ERO in education, that checks on GPs as they work and reviews their performance annually.
Something the Medical Council does not do, nor even consider doing.
Faith must be restored in a visit to the GP. Otherwise lives will continue to be unnecessarily lost because of inaccurate diagnoses. At present I live in Australia. But I will always be a Kiwi, and I always keep up with what’s happening back home. My letter to you comes from my own experiences in the mental health system.
I cannot believe the stupidity and incompetence of the mental health system in Aotearoa.
This obviously negligent, passthe-buck attitude shows a complete lack of common sense and a extremely poor ‘‘duty of care’’.
It almost seems like these departments have found an easy way to rid themselves of our mentally ill, our loved ones, by giving them the freedom to commit suicide.
I dare any of the powers concerned to tell me why my judgment on this is wrong, before I will consider changing my mind.
Dr Brad Strong’s statement ‘‘Incarceration of our neighbours simply because they suffer from mental illness is fortunately a thing of the past’’.
As far as I am concerned Mr Strong is still living in the past. He’s missed the boat, the obvious, by going from one extreme to another.
The wellbeing of some patients, to have the opportunity to get well, requires more restrictive measures until they are stable enough for more freedom.
That decision should be made by competent mental health professionals, combined with information from close family and friends of the patient.
Are there any competent mental health professionals in New Zealand?
From what I have been finding out, it doesn’t seem so.
I am disgusted by the stupidity of the so-called powers who say they care.