Tag Archive for 'health professions'

Michael Savage is a drongo

Published
by
tigtog
4 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Disability, Feminism, Levity, Masculinity, Parenting, Philosophy, Politics, Relationships, Science and Women
. 29 Comments

I could have used many harsher terms, but I was exhausted from outrage and despair after reading his latest, and couldn’t really give him my best invective.

Apparently, despite decades of study from medical and childhood health professions, Michael Savage knows better than all of them when it comes to autism. (Like so many of his fellow cultural warrior pundits, an awful lot of it boils down to WIMMIN R DOIN IT RONG (AS USUAL (COZ WIMMIN R LOOSRS)), but there’s a nasty side-dish of JUST SNAP OUT OF IT)

That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’” Savage concluded, “[I]f I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, ‘Don’t behave like a fool.’ The worst thing he said — ‘Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.’ That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

Basically? F*ck you and that ablist, misogynist high horse you’re riding, Savage. Continue reading ‘Michael Savage is a drongo’

About time

Published
by
tigtog
9 months ago
in Ethics, Government, Health, Law and Medicine
. 60 Comments

Today’s Australian:

A NATIONAL system of registration for doctors is being finalised by federal, state and territory governments, which will help prevent cases such as that of Jayant Patel in Queensland and the “Butcher of Bega” in NSW.

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon yesterday said the Council of Australian Governments was expected to sign off soon on a national registration system for health professionals.

“It will make a difference to ensure high standards across the whole country,” she said on ABC television. “It’s no solace to the people who are victims of the treatment for now but it needs to be proceeded with.”

The current system for registration of health professionals is done by medical boards in each state and territory. The COAG proposal is to replace this with a national process overseen by nine separate boards for all the different health professions.

Ms Roxon’s comments were made in relation to the so-called Butcher of Bega, deregistered former doctor Graeme Stephen Reeves, who allegedly performed unnecessary and sometimes horrific gynaecological procedures at Bega and Pambula hospitals on the NSW south coast over several months in 2002.

Self-regulation in most professions has been problematic, so it’s beyond time to have an external oversight system properly put in place for the health professions. It’s only shameful that it took a case as full of blatant system failures as that of Dr Reeves to finally get some action.

Interestingly, I hadn’t heard this before in all the recent coverage (emphasis mine):

The board maintains Mr Reeves was able to dodge the restriction because he moved from Sydney to take up a new post in Bega and at the time legislation prevented the board from passing on details of the ban to his new employer.

Really?

Kudos also to the NSW Government for planning to institute a system of mandatory reporting for medical personnel of medical misconduct by their colleagues. Such systems have been recommended by watchdog groups for years (decades?) of course, and who knows how many unnecessary harms could have been avoided if such systems had been in place for all that time, but at least it’s finally happening.

Next: regulating the specialist medical colleges so that they can no longer unreasonably inflate their incomes by maintaining an artificial scarcity of medical specialists. Isn’t competition meant to be healthy?

Crossposted from Hoyden About Town (related post by Lauredhel)