Toxic fungus found at La Jolla hospital

The headline above is taken from the "Sacramento Bee" of California. In the body of the article we read of the fungus concerned: "It is harmless to healthy people". So much for "toxic". Most things are toxic in some dose and to some people, of course. Are peanuts "toxic"? They kill a lot of people who are allergic to them. Even common salt can kill you if you eat enough of it.

So why the scare headline? Why not, (say) "problem fungus"? Easy. Because it was a private hospital concerned -- and a Leftist rag that often puts up very cautious headlines (See e.g. here or here) could not resist letting their socialist hatreds out.

Aspergillus is of course an extremely common fungus in the environment and hence both difficult to eliminate and much less important to eliminate than many less common but highly virulent hospital-borne organisms.






Australian junior doctors to catch up on anatomy

Remedial courses in anatomy are being considered for junior doctors following complaints their anatomical knowledge upon graduation from medical school is "unacceptably low". Amid a push by senior doctors to increase the amount of anatomical teaching in universities, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons says it is negotiating directly with university anatomy departments to provide extra tuition to get junior doctors up to speed before they enter surgical training.

Julian Smith, a member of the anatomy committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said the "basic anatomical knowledge amongst graduating medical students at many universities is unacceptably low". Professor Smith -- a heart surgeon and professor of surgery at Monash University -- said he had some final-year medical students in his operating theatre to watch a live cardiac operation. "The heart was exposed and I pointed to a part of the heart and asked them to name it. They said 'the liver'. That was in my own university. "There are some fairly ugly anecdotes. I don't think too many of them are as bad as that, but it's a big worry."

RACS executive director for surgical affairs John Quinn said the college was "concerned about the level of anatomical knowledge of those wanting to enter the (RACS) training program". "That knowledge is much less than it used to be," he said. The college had already tried persuading medical schools to increase the anatomy training they provided, but the "community is demanding more from their doctor". "As many (medical school) courses have moved from being six years to four years postgraduate, the time is less and the demands are more and something has to give," Dr Quinn said. "The rationale (for cutting anatomy teaching) is that the only doctors who need to know anatomy are surgeons. That's rubbish, but it's the justification."

The Weekend Australian reported a coalition of concerned doctors had sent a 70-page submission to the federal Department of Education, Science and Training, calling for benchmarks on medical training and mandatory minimum standards for science teaching.

Professor Smith said when students encountered patients "their anatomical knowledge is often very weak and makes it difficult for them to appreciate many of the clinical conditions they might encounter". "If they don't know the normal, how can they understand the abnormal?" he said.

The Australian Medical Council accredits Australia's 17 medical schools and approves their curricula. Chief executive officer Ian Frank said the AMC set "general requirements" about the knowledge, skills and attributes that graduating doctors were expected to have after their education. "We have stopped short of saying that means you have to have done X-hundred hours of such-and-such, because there really isn't any evidence ... that says that 500 hours (of anatomy teaching) is better than 300 hours, or 100 hours," he said. "The studies that have been done here and elsewhere show the guys coming out (of Australian medical schools) are at least the equal of those from more traditional courses, and superior in some areas, such as interpersonal skills and capacity to work in collaboration."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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