A large tertiary care center in Sydney, Australia is pulling out all the stops to try and cut their expenses. As of next month, all doctors and nurses currently on staff will be replaced by parents who have done research on the Internet. “I can’t tell you how happy and relieved I am when a patient tells me they have done some research on the internet” said head of neurology, Dr. Eric Sheppard. “It’s only topped by a patient telling me they have a family member who is a nurse.” The hospital is excited about how much money this move should save them, not to mention the overwhelming support from parents everywhere. “This is a great move in my opinion” said anti-vaccer Meryl Dorey. “Most parents know more than doctors anyways, so this is a huge step in the right direction.” The current staff are in the process of being moved to other less innovative health centers. Source
Have you ever met a parent of a child that had a severe reaction to a vaccine? I am one. It is not a joke. I watched as my child became very ill after a MMR vaccine. It resulted in encephalopathy, a stroke and triggering of mitochondrial disease. I have spent an obscene amount of time and money getting appropriate medical care for him. My other child had surgery a few weeks ago and the hospitalist came in his room and said she was going to give him acetaminophen. This is highly contraindicated for him and listed as a allergy on his chart, which she did not bother to read. I told her in front of the residents she was rounding with that he can not have it and that it would tank out his glutathione for 30 days which he has very low levels already. I could have been nasty and said do your job and read a chart before prescribing treatment or are you trying to kill my child! Parents should be respected not mocked. I have been inspired to follow a path to practice medicine because of the wonderful doctors that brought healing to my family. Adverse vaccine reactions happen and to say otherwise is a lie. The only thing to debate is how often they occur.
Wow - your story is terrible and you have my deepest sympathies. However, as a student you should already know that all medicines can cause reactions ranging from mild to fatal. People have died from penicillin yet we still prescribe it. Similarly vaccines have saved millions of lives all around the world - which, like all evidence-based medicines, is why we continue to administer them. Not sure why you posted your experiences of vaccination as it's not relevant to the point of this post and of course doctors should, and do, respect parents. Many/most are parents themselves. This article was just a tongue in cheek bit of fun and should be seen as such.
The opposite is also true. Parents or adult patients that do nothing to learn about their disease and leave it all to caregivers are really difficult and unnecessarily time consuming.
drdjmilly. I really hope your name does not represent the fact that you are a Dr. If it does you have once again proven the point that Dr.s don't listen. Her reason for posting her story is very obvious. She is replying to a story about patients knowing more than Dr.s often do. In her case her child's Dr. Was given her child's information and should have known at least as much as her if not more. Instead the Dr. Obviously did not even read her child's chart to know what he was allergic to making the case that once again the patient or in this case the patients parent knew more than the Dr. How you can't see how this relates especially seeing how it could have been a fatal mistake is beyond me. Maybe you have never had the pleasure of dealing with Dr.s who who work out of practices because they really are just" practicing" unfortunately the woman who wrote the comment, it was her son they were practicing on. So many times you HAVE to no more than the Dr the results could be fatal. Maybe you will understand now?!?!?!
Auntieem79 and tina77, I don't understand why you're attacking this post. Sure, the story tina77 posted is relevant to doctor and nurse neglect, but this "article" is a mockery of parents who come in spouting off all their knowledge of what's wrong, when they brought their child in for diagnosis. Parents who come in and say "I think my child has encephalitis" because they read the symptoms online and one of their child's symptoms from a cold matches it. When you go into a doctor's office and tell them, without any diagnostic proof, what's wrong with your child because you "saw it online", they have every right to dismiss you because you are undermining their professional expertise that they spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars developing. If your child has an allergy on his/her chart, or is getting a vaccine for the first time and there's no way anyone (parents included) could know they would have a severe reaction, then it's reasonable to assume that you would know and understand what you're talking about when you confront a doctor with it. If you waltz into their office and tell them the diagnosis without any tests having been run or previous consultations, why should they listen? Please, by all means. Treat your child for hepatitis because he's a little jaundiced from you giving him too much cough syrup for his cold.
Most of the civilized world has forgotten about natural medicines that were used before doctors came on the scene and are still used in most remote areas of the world..Yes parents can nurse their sick loved ones back to health with a bit of simple knowledge.
The civilised world has used natural medicines to treat patients. The ones that are proven to work we now call them medicine.
