Doc; It's a good day to talk medicine; the blood on my screen looks like ER on a bad night.
I spent almost 10 years running the RT department at the Palo Alto VA. I got to see the good, the bad, and the ugly (bureaucracy). The quality of health care was generally pretty respectable when I was leaving, despite its reputation during the Nam days. (The then Chief of Medicine got the Noble Prize a few years back for work that led to Viagra). I saw some pretty amazing things there, including a successful pulm.art. embolectomy in a quad. I think half the service chiefs of both the VA and stanfurd were involved on that case.
Then there is the bureaucracy. At some point during my stay, I started crunching numbers; I was GS-11, had about 15 therapists under me, staffing 24/7/365. My people were GS-7, operating life support systems. Personnel had more people my grade and better to run 8/5/250 than I had therapists. Scatological expletive deleted. Took better than 7 years to fire an employee who called in sick 36 days/year. (Linda Tripp, and there are a whole lot of LT's in the pentagonal, gets GS18 to schedule congressional tours of military facilities)
The bestest part was the chance to practice a more idealized form of medicine; no problems with home care stuff, drugs and supplies, rehab programs, etc. I was also blown away by the camaraderie of the patients. Very much a familial buddy type system, no doubt engendered by the military. It doesn't exist elsewhere. And lots of great personal stories, going back to a WW1 vet with lung damage from mustard gas.
TK |
