Off-site

Shortly after the evening symposium on the after-eighty generation, I attended (yet another) gangster meeting.

Take aside those eternally controversial items, a hot topic this time was the on-call system of subspecialties.

For those who are not familiar with the event, it all comes from the Court of Final Appeal, which recently ruled that doctors could get a day off or a full-day's pay for off-site duties, even though they might not need to work or answer calls. (The whole event was stirred up many years ago by a few persons who claimed themselves to be fighting for the benefit of junior doctors and possibly patients. Regular readers of this blog would know my view.) Our friends outside the solar system obviously asked for an urgent review of the current off-site call system in order to stop the bleeding.

How could that work out ? Alas, there are limited number of options:

• Stop the off-site call for some subspecialities.
• Put the off-site subspecialty call simultaneous with the on-site call (for example, general medical take) for the same doctor. (In other words, they are more likely to be on call during weekends and holidays.)
  
• (Apparently proposed by the heads of those extra-terrestrials) In the long run, stop all off-site call and put all essential subspecialty calls as residential.

Well, it is too easy to imagine the consequence but impossible to find anyone who gets the benefit. As my friend KM pointed out: It puts an end to all doctors who want to improve patient care by goodwill.

PS. What question would you ask when there is Sichuan pepper on those few persons' tongue ?