Is The New Hospital Building Making Things Worse?

So in an earlier post, I talked about Paul who had suffered outrages at the hands of the Social Security.

But they weren't the worst thing to happen to him.

As I said, he got cancer. They performed an operation to remove a chunk of liver and a kidney and put him on this course of drugs to deal with a cancer too small to be operated on. Over the months, this cancer seemed static.

Then his blood calcium levels rose. The consultant said that it was nothing and indeed Paul's blood results were better than his.

The blood calcium levels continued to rise. He was given some drug to counteract it and told not to worry. The drug didn't work

Over the months, his blood calcium levels contained to rise. Paul's condition worsened. His wife, who was an ex-Nurse, knew something was wrong and demanded that he be seen by another consultant.

The second consultant told Paul that elevated blood calcium was usually a sure sign that the cancer was attacking the bones. So he did some tests and required Paul to stay at the hospital until the results came back. As soon as the consultant got the results, he strapped Paul to a stretcher and flew him to the mainland for emergency Radium treatment. Paul's body was riddled with cancers. Well, it was too little too late and Paul died a few months later.

That was over 15 months ago and Paul's widow has been trying to get a meeting with these specialists. She's not interested in suing any one or pointing a finger of blame. She just wants to find out how Paul could have got so bad whilst under the hospital's observation. That's a reasonable question, isn't it?

The hospital is ignoring her.

To add insult to injury, a friend of Paul's widow had exactly the same condition as Paul but because he didn't have Paul's consultant, the problem was spotted early, treated and the doctors have given him another 2 years at the least.

So has life and death in Jersey become a lottery depending on which doctor you see?

So would Paul be alive today had he seen a different consultant? I can't answer that because I'm not a doctor. All I know is that there is definitely something very wrong with a society where we even have to contemplate a question like that.

So I'd like to end by leaving you with 2 questions to think about:

1. Would the outcome have been different if we had built a new hospital building.
2. Do the problems with the hospital go deeper than that but the building is diverting vital attention and resources away from the real problems and putting peoples lives at risk?