A Brutal Game [antikvár]

CHAPTER I The Game and the Players In mid-1984 an active, elderly lady in her seventies was admitted to a public hospital for the outmoded treatment of traction for a broken hip. The surgeon who saw her said that he would operate (the modern treatment) only in a private hospital. In order to raise the money for the treatment, the lady arranged for her piano to be sold. She was admitted to a private hospital to have a pin put in the hip. Two days after the operation, when the money from the sale of the piano ran out, she was returned to the casualty ward of a public hospital. The patient's response was simple: "You bastards blackmailed me." (Van Leishout, 1985) On 24 January 1985, Dr Bruce Shepherd, an orthopaedic surgeon and a leader of the New South Wales procedural specialists (that is, virtually all medical specialists except physicians, psychiatrists and usually dermatologists), commented on why an injured miner from Wollongong had been moved from hospital to hospital when surgeons had refused to operate on the injured man's crushed fingers. Asked by a Sydney Channel 10 reporter to explain why this had happened, Dr Shepherd's response included the remark, "In England, I can tell you, it would take even longer to treat this man." (Rees, 1985) The questions as to why an elderly patient had to bargain to receive treatment and why she was returned to a pubhc hospital merit investigation. Her bitter comments about her experience do not match the stereotype picture of a medical profession guarding carefully its image and its standards of conduct. Similar questions as to what was affecting decisions about