My grandmother, who was born in 1901 and died almost 20 years ago after a long and noisy life, trained as a nurse. When she started there were no such things as antibiotics - so the focus was on hygiene, everything had to gleam. She could make a bed with creases so sharp they could cut you. She didn't do bedside manner, even for the grandchildren she loved. Instead she had a real facility for pointing out your faults. It was refreshing - in much the same way that swimming in the North Sea on Christmas Day* is refreshing.
She liked a drink and at Christmas parties she often drank too much. She was a member of enough clubs to attend perhaps 50 Christmas lunches every year, beginning in early November. She never tired of them. When libated she was known to have the ocassional cigarette - a habit she'd really tossed decades beforehand. She believed in saturated fats of all kinds - and had a weakness for strange foods from another age: brawn, dripping on bread, black pudding, tapioca.
When my mum, her daughter, produced a meal with rice as the carbohydrate, my Gran would say helpful things like, "What is this muck?" She consumed industrial quantities of salt, enjoyed the pokies, had an eye for much younger men and loved to embarrass her adolescent grandson.
She was exhausting, she was unforgettable. She was a Character.
I've been thinking about her a lot this week, partly because it was her anniversary earlier in the month but mostly because the government announced it had appointed a Chief Nurse - a capable and impressive woman. Australia hasn't had one for ages. In a small, almost ineffable, way it makes me feel better to know she's there. My Gran would have approved.
*Sea Palling, Norfolk, 1993. Never again.
2 comments:
Dear Richard,
I'm glad that you feel the, "chief nurse" reassuring - but that warm fuzzy feeling isn't the best way of determining public policy.
I have moved to Australia because I love it here - but one of my criticisms would be that the Aussies don't often look to the experience abroad and thereby miss out on a wealth of experinece and knowledge.
The health system works better here then in the UK - with the exception of 2 points.
1) there is no single health record here which leads to duplication of tests/referrals and consultations.
2) No single GP - with the result that people shop around and lead to an increase in (1)
This situation is going to be made worse by having allied health prescribing and refering.
This has happened in the UK - where the experiment has not been a success.
Public policy needs to be determined by EVIDENCE and not on what feels right.
Chris Rook
Hi Chris
I think it's a little unfair to say we don't look to overseas experience - we do, indeed Australia has been one of the most outward looking countries in the world.
We often take ideas from overseas and - as you know - we often take people. At the moment the impressive Tom Bentley (ex Demos) is here. He has been attached to the Victorian Premier's office but these days I think he's on secondment to Deputy Prime Minister. Tom's an easy example to recall but there have been many similar exchanges in which Australia becomes the net beneficiary.
I think the idea of a single health record is an excellent one, and technology is already moving us that way. (http://www.mivitals.com/ is one private sector approach)
But the mobility of the workforce now probably makes a single GP approach an impractical one. In the last 10 years I've lived in five different suburbs of Sydney and a stint in Canberra - and there are plenty of people who've moved much more (and further) than that.
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