Vaccines - are we messing up again?

[Kaz]

Deb we took my mum-in-law for hers yesterday. It was in the Community Centre in Churchdown, which is a village between Gloucester and Cheltenham. It was all very efficient, to be honest I was pretty impressed. A short time queuing, then there were eight vaccination "stations" each with a chair for the patient, a medic giving the jab, and another sat at a small table with a laptop. Half the hall was full of socially distanced chairs, where people had to sit for 15 minutes to make sure they didn't react to the jab. D has a card with the details of her jab, and the appointment for the 20th of Jan for the follow-up.

Hope it all goes well up there for you! Am sure it will xxx

[cromwell]

That's good work Debih.
We've heard nothing so far.
Some of the delay has to come down to the individual health trusts? Some will be on the ball, others not so much.

[Workingman]

I would like to make it clear that I was not having a go at GP surgeries. GP surgeries have a part to play, but they and hospital are not the only places we could use.

My mention of "clinics" was in the sense of a central meeting place where the inoculations could take place. You know, like the tents set up in the playground when we were younger to get our measles, tetanus and polio doses or in community centres, as Kaz mentions.

Where there's the will..... and all that.

[cruiser2]

We have had a phone call from our surgery saying my wife and I could go and get the vaxination. Bt we declined. We are now on the list to have it in 2021.

We were not told where the clinic would be, hopefully it will be at the surgery.
Doctors are being paid over £10.00 for each vaxination.

Several letters in DM from former medical staff who have volunteerd to give the injections. A retired GP rejected because it did not have A-level
cerificates.
Yet young men and women after a short traing course can take bllod samples which involves sticking a needle in a blood vessel to take the blood sample.
What is the difference ?

[Kaz]

Your decision Cruiser, but I know I'll be having it asap. Are you not worried about catching it?.

[Workingman]

Several letters in DM from former medical staff who have volunteerd to give the injections. A retired GP rejected because it did not have A-level cerificates.
Yet young men and women after a short training course can take blood samples which involves sticking a needle in a blood vessel to take the blood sample.
What is the difference ?

The difference? One is retired with certification that has lapsed. The others have up to date training and have been signed off as competent by a relevant professional body and therefore have certification with ongoing monitoring

It is not necessary to be a qualified doctor, nurse or even a medic to be able to administer injections. I was an engineering technician in the RAF and also a first aider and shelter marshal. I was signed off to administer prediloxime and atropine via needle and saline via drip, and also to take bloods. I was certified annually and if I missed the check for any reason my registration lapsed - no more injections.

If the GP was so concerned about this then their time would be better spent getting re certified rather than writing to the DM.

[Suff]

Or, perhaps, instead of some know nothing minimum wage clerk replying with a brain dead response, there could have been a "well you don't meet the criteria I have been given, please let me pass your query on to my supervisor."

After all, hundreds, up to a thousand, people are dying per day.

This is not a situation where indemnity from being sued should block the ability to save lives.

The public has a right to expect more from the NHS.

What debih and her practise are doing is the benchmark, not a jobsworth response.

This is newsworthy because this kind of brain dead thinking, common in the NHS, has no place in this pandemic.

Save the NHS? This is backwards and I have said it more than once. What the hell are we saving?

[cromwell]

According to the Telegraph and the Guido Fawkes website, there is something of a scandal going on here.
In March 2020 40,000 retired doctors applied to help, of which 30,000 were found to be eligible. By the end of July on 5,000 had been given jobs.

Recently retired doctors have been writing in to the letters page of the Telegraph all week. My favourite was the doctor who said the response he got was along the lines of "We're sorted thanks but we might be able to find you a job in the car park". Or Dr Brian Cooper of Worcestershire who was approved to help with the pandemic in April but heard nothing thereafter, until he contacted Sadiq Javed. Shortly after Dr Cooper received an invitation to a Zoom meeting on Nov 30th with the assurance that all the retired docs in on the meeting would be hearing something in two weeks. Since when, nothing.

Doctors are reporting the hurdles they have to overcome to register, including documents on Equality, Diversity and Human Rights, Fire Safety, Conflict Resolution, and Preventing Radicalisation.

The Telegraph is behind a paywall but the link to the Guido story is here.
https://order-order.com/2020/12/31/dive ... -vaccines/

The NHS is even more in need of a shakeup than ever.

[Workingman]

Sorry, but Guido Fawkes / Telegraph are (maliciously) conflating two different things.

The volunteers requested earlier in the year (April?) were to help the NHS fight Covid by returning to some non-Covid wards and possibly help staff the Nightingales. It was hoped that they would be able to keep some NHS services ticking over by stepping up when the crisis started to spiral and medics were redeployed to the front lines to fight the pandemic. With very few exceptions - those with up to date and relevant skills - they would not be taking on any front line Covid work. The doctors mentioned in the articles were part of this group, they were not specifically volunteering to administer injections.

Having said that the bureaucratic hoops they have had to jump through are ridiculous. A whole raft of the non-medical bumpf is totally unnecessary.

Vaccination volunteers are another issue entirely. In October or November the Government introduce a new national protocol to allow non-medics to administer a future vaccine. Initially it was to allow more healthcare workers - such as physiotherapists or student doctors and nurses, as well as some working outside the NHS - to do vaccines. The law was then amended to allow people who are not registered healthcare professionals to safely administer, with relevant training, a Covid-19 or influenza vaccine. That's it, nothing else.

It's the American military way of training people to do one job well, but to only do that job.

[cromwell]

Right. I didn't get the difference between the April volunteers and the rest. But I think, neither did they.
There is a problem, you have the skills to help and you volunteer.
And you are met with a wall of obfuscation, bs and incompetence.
For Professors and Doctors with years of experience to have to jump through diversity and radicalisation hoops when all they want to do is help is unbelievable.
Or rather, it is all too believable and a very fair indication of where the NHS is now.