medpagetoday.com/rheumatolo...
This is a world-wide phenomenon. They blame the baby boomer generation (where have I heard that before? Everything is our fault...) but they have had quite a long time to realise that there is this big group of people all aging at the same rate. First there weren't enough schools, then Uni places - now it is hospital services...
They blame the baby boomer retirees. They have known this would happen for over fifty years, what did they do about it?
It gets me,they knew us boomers existed yet they didn’t have the foresight that we would be around for a while and use services. Or were they secretly hoping we would all magically disappear?😂
Probably now trying to bump us off!
I suppose we could all join hands and jump off a cliff together. 😀
Noooooooooo!
You wouldn’t be allowed to down here - it’s the Jurassic Coast - not good for tourism! Although I don’t know......🤷🏻♀️
Your cliffs fall down on people (usually when they shouldn't be there though I admit...)
Unfortunately, there are some idiots about!!
Darwinism and "You can't cure stupid" ...
More’s the pity.
Hehehe!
I thought Beachy Head was famous for suicide jumps ! 😳
It’s not people deliberating attempting suicide, but walking underneath cliff faces that are likely to slide at a moment, a day or even a year’s notice is not wise!
Yet they still do it, obviously cannot read, or think ‘that won’t happen to me,’ Unfortunately it can, and has!
😳
I always say to my husband when it all gets too much, or I know I'm getting dementia, I will jump off Beeston hump (high hill overlooking the sea)....his answer, knowing your luck the tide will be in!!😕......
😂🤣🤣 The meany!
Pred head again...meant to say he said tide would be out!!........
Pred head. That’s what I understood you to mean.
That why we baby boomers have broad shoulders (well that’s my excuse!).
As OH used to say....always in the s**t, it just the depth that varies!
Furthermore, there was this huge cohort paying taxes which could have been invested in the infrastructure needed. I know our parents had to pay for the new schools, but Boomers' taxes could have gone a long way towards putting in place the increased housing, medical care and other services now needed. Instead of believing in "trickle down" (really trickle up) economics.
The other thing is the idea that if you make sure a community is safe for children and eighty-year-olds then everyone is looked after.
I seem to recall a sort of 'closed shop' operated in the medical training world.
You know what we've recently learned is happening in Canada? Context, doctor shortage worsening as Boomer aged doctors retire in droves. There are not enough replacements because medical schools cut back on enrollment a few years ago, predicting an oversupply of physicians (guess politicians forgot that doctors retire too). Because of the way doctors are paid, specialists get paid a lot more and hospitalists are on salary, but general practitioners piecework, fewer of those scarce grads are going into general practice. But, and this is the kicker, there are newly trained doctors who have to spend two years working with a mentor, and they are matched up according to some arcane formula, and this year dozens of them have not been placed, therefore cannot continue working towards their full qualifications. This is a stumbling block set up by the federal government. For example, apparently there is a need in the next few years for something like 60 new pediatricians in Saskatchewan. This year there are four placements for the young grads. To solve this problem it's being suggested that we train fewer doctors! Adding to the difficulty of course is the fact that because so many older doctors are retiring there aren't enough left to be mentors. Catch-22.
Been taking lesson from the UK have they? They totally messed up the training scheme a few years ago.
My fantasy Heron. Doctors/teachers were highly respected for their contribution to ordinary peoples lives & not just earners in a well paid job. Something has been going skewed for a while now! Generational, financial, power shift,workload............Soon it will be self diagnosis by robotics & treatment by robotics. Err! For some of us no change there then!!!!ATB
A huge problem here is not just the rate of pay (our GPs are the lowest paid in the country I think) but an incredible load of paperwork which can eat up a quarter of their time. Maybe now that we have just within the past few weeks joined the twentieth (sic) century by paying doctors for their time when making phone consultations and giving the GPs a small raise even though their contract isn't due for negotiation for some time the pressures will ease slightly.
Paperwork & bureaucratic control. The bane of the so called paperless world. What a waste of time most of it is. System madness. I seen it when teaching few years ago & it's worse now. Talented people are worn down by it & paper pushers triumph not to the common good! Good docs should be rewarded. One size does not fit all.
Can’t blame the post war boom for this mess, I was born in 1942 and when I arrived in junior school there were 62 of us in a classroom for 30 it was a bit of a squeeze......
I just read parts of a book called, "Are you Sure it's Arthritis" by Dr. Paul Davidson. It was published in 1985. The subtitle is "A guide to Soft-tissue Rheumatism". He has chapters on PMR and GCA which could have been the basis for much of the current best practices directives. We need more like him!!
I searched for updated editions and found none, unfortunately.
Relative to the article on the lack of Rheumatologists:
These deficits are in part related to baby‐boomer retirements, a millennial predominance, and an...... increase of female..... and part‐time providers, in parallel with an increased demand for adult rheumatology care due to an increasing and aging U.S. population.
How does an increase in female providers affect the deficits in Rheumatology? I wouldn't see how the sex of the providers would determine the number of providers. Except, the fact that increasing numbers of women in a field often drives down wages. If men tend to focus more on high wage fields, then women might drive men out...... But that is probably just my cynicism coming through.
Because many women want to work part-time and preferably 9-5. Which means needing double the number of providers to cover the same number of patient consultations. It isn't just rheumatology, it is all the fields that are ideal for part-time work without OOH/emergency cover: rheumatology, GP, dermatology, etc etc.
In my neck of the woods, San Francisco Bay area, most women work full time as well as men, in most professions. Interestingly, most of the newer rheumatologists at Kaiser HMO are women....Well trained, Very responsive....full time. As they have gained seniority, some work part time, but that is true across specialties from what I can see and true of some men as well, though perhaps not quite to the same degree.
I'll add more cheery news but this time about Psychiatry (in the US):
3 out of 5 practicing psychiatrists in the States are over the age of 55.
Only an average of 4% of medical students go into Psychiatry.
The wait time to get into see a psychiatrist can be 3 - 6 months. (3 for Adult; 6 for child)
Psychiatrists aren't treating depression, anxiety, and the less complicated disorders. Those are mostly being treated by primary care (GP) doctors. So you better hope that doctor learned psychiatry really well when in med school because he/she is going to be treating it-- unless you have schizophrenia, bi-polar, etc., which are referred to Psychiatrist.
Once the Baby Boomer Psychiatrists start to retire we are going to have a huge shortage of Psych docs.
What a surprise!!!!
Oh joy and bliss unbounded 😊
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