Publish or Perish
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This is more serious than Hammond's recent book, Medicine Balls, but also very useful. Despite the billions pouring into the NHS, the service has not improved enough, partly because the UK does not have a culture of challenging authority or a strong patient voice. Hammond has been advocating the publication of comparative NHS performance data for years, most notably in his evidence to the Bristol Public Inquiry. UK heart surgeons now publish their results and mortality rates have continued to fall, without any evidence of patients being denied surgery. Most other specialties have yet to follow suit and, until they do, patient choice will remain a meaningless sham.
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Trust him...
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From an author who has been up with the GMC... I would not trust this books at all, he sells his 'time' to the highest bidder.
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Every British patient should read this
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We desperatly need more doctors like Hammond to expose the medical schools terrible teaching methods and the attitude of many doctors towards patients as well as the appalling lack of skill and safety. Unfortunatly, the NHS isn't "the envy of the world" and everything is detailed in this very humourous,well written book.
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Iatrogenic diseases - the curse of modern times
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Dr Hammond's excellent book is written in layman's language and, indeed, highlights the desperate need for every patient to arm him or herself with knowledge in order to counter the very real threat to health represented by many members of the medical profession. I, myself, suffer from arachnoiditis, an Iatrogenic (doctor-caused) disease brought about by invasive spinal procedures. I am in the forefront of the fight for justice and compensation for victims - but it is a lonely and hard battle. We need more people like Hammond to tell it as it is.
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I have to criticise Dr. Hammond's advice on obesity
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Although Dr. Hammond's book certainly takes the lid off the medical profession from the inside, it has not told us very much that most of us had not already, to our varying cost, discovered or deduced about doctors, nor is this terrifying story confined to Great Britain. I have so far lived in five countries apart from England and in many cases I should have felt safer with a veterinarian than with the physician for humans who was treating me; certainly my dogs have often been treated more kindly and courteously than I have. It is good that Dr. Hammond has made progress since he used to think of his overweight patients as "sad, fat bastards", but he, as 99.99% of doctors do, needs to look very urgently into causes of obesity other than that the unfortunate sufferer is a pathetic, self-indulgent sack of potatoes who deserves the heart attack he/she is likely to die of. This pigheadedness is responsible for a lot of unnecessary suffering and even death through anorexia or just plain old suicide from despair. If they are really interested in making a slim, healthy society, doctors should look into the vast quantities of hormones and antibiotics that we are fed by farmers through the chemical supplements they feed their animals to increase their sale weight. It is disgraceful that we should have no say about which substances should enter our bodies via the food we pay good money for. It is arrogant to conclude that overweight people are all couch potatoes stuffing ourselves on KFC. Doctors must learn to listen to and believe what their patients say. Dr. Hammond is wrong to advise "fatties" to curb their appetites by drinking several glasses of iced water a day. Doctors may anaesthetize their stomachs with large helpings of beer and curry, but anyone who hasn't done so is likely to have the most terrifying and agonizing stomach cramps after a few sips of iced water - a personal experience of mine. Also, I have it on, sadly, the very best of authorities that bulimics drink cold water to help them vomit - not the most advisable road to go.
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