Beware Of Getting Hospital Appointments Wrong
On Monday, I had an appointment for an ultrasound examination on my liver at the local hospital at 09:40.
The appointment had been arranged by telephone and I also had a text which included the phrase “Please refer to your letter for pre-attendance advice and instructions.” I had been given basic instructions over the telephone, but I did not receive the letter. This is not the hospital’s fault, as I have received many letters in the past from the hospital and its Trust.
But my post has been very erratic these last few weeks and I suspect the letter is delayed somewhere.
As it happened, it didn’t matter, as the basic instructions sufficed and the ultrasound was a success all round.
Perhaps, in these days of problems with the Royal Mail, it may be prudent to include minimum instructions in the text message reminder.
University Of Manchester And National Grid Team Up To Develop SF6-Free Retrofill Solution For Electricity Network
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from National Grid.
This is the introductory paragraph.
National Grid and the University of Manchester are to collaborate on a four-year project to develop a full-scale demonstrator at the Deeside Centre for Innovation, designed to test at scale how the UK can retrofill sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) across its network of high-voltage equipment.
Note.
- Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) is a gas commonly used in the power industry to provide electrical insulation and arc interruption.
- Eighty percent of sulphur hexafluoride is used in the electricity industry.
- According to Wikipedia, sulphur hexafluoride has several important applications, including a medical one in eye surgery.
- But sulphur hexafluoride is a is a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential that is 25,200 times greater than CO2.
It certainly looks to be a good idea to see if the sulphur hexafluoride can be eliminated from electrical equipment and other uses, that may release the gas into the atmosphere.
These paragraphs from the press release outline the project.
The £1.9m project will see experts at Manchester help determine how National Grid can develop a retrofill solution to replace SF6 with an environmentally friendlier alternative without having to replace or otherwise modify the existing equipment.
This solution – to be demonstrated at National Grid’s test facility the Deeside Centre for Innovation – will mean National Grid can avoid the environmental impact and cost of replacing equipment otherwise fit for many more years’ service.
It is not the first time National Grid and the University of Manchester have teamed up on a project exploring SF6 alternatives – a previous initiative which concluded in 2020 is now up for an IET Engineering & Technology magazine innovation award for ‘Best Innovation in Net Zero and Sustainability’.
The press release also says this about the Deeside Centre for Innovation.
National Grid’s Deeside Centre for Innovation in North Wales is the first of its kind in Europe, where electricity network assets can be tested under real life conditions, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It certainly seems that National Grid and Manchester University are on top of the problem and have the resources to achieve success in the project.
The Russian Attack On Ukraine
You may wonder what this has got to do with improving transformers and switchgear in Manchester and Wales.
Recently, the Russians have been targeting the Ukrainian electricity network. Are Ukrainian transformers and switchgear insulated with sulphur hexafluoride and if they are how of this potent global warming gas has been released into the atmosphere?
Rescued By A B12 Injection
Last week, I wasn’t feeling too well, as I wrote in The Hour Change Has Completely Knocked Me Out.
I had a whole raft of symptoms.
- Not being able to get dressed.
- Sleeping all the time.
- Poor hand-eye co-ordination.
- Dizziness, which got me to hospital.
Then on Tuesday, this week, I had my three-monthly B12 injection.
And all the symptoms disappeared.
The Hour Change Has Completely Knocked Me Out
Last Saturday, the 29th of October, the clocks went back and I’ve not had a totally good week.
On Tuesday, I couldn’t get dressed, as my gammy left arm and hand didn’t work.
- I also felt a bit unsteady, as if I’d had a couple of whiskies. But then, I never drink anything more alcoholic, than 0.0% real ale.
- As there was no-one else, I dialled 999.
- An ambulance came and took me to the Royal London Hospital, where nothing was found.
- But as my body responded to the hospital’s superb air-conditioning, I was allowed to go home.
- T think the hospital thought I took a taxi, but in reality I took the Overground to Dalston Junction station.
They had suggested, that I should take my planned trip to Doncaster. Which I did!
- I took a Hitachi Class 800 train to the North.
- And I took an InterCity225 train home.
Both have air-conditioning that only affects me positively, unlike Class 390 trains, which have put me in hospital before.
On Thursday, I wrote up my trip, or at least the ticketing in An Affordable Trip To Doncaster.
On Friday, I fell asleep on the floor and missed a friend bringing round my washing.
On Saturday, I woke late, went out for lunch and then watched the television.
In the evening, I was tired so went to bed at nine, which is unusual for me.
I got up at nine and did my trip on the Elizabeth Line, which I wrote about in Taking A Train Between Abbey Wood And Ilford Stations On The Lizzie Line.
As a Control Engineer, I tend to believe that the loss of the hour a week ago, has been the cause of my erratic sleeping.
- I should also note, that as a child, I dreaded the clock changes.
- I was also a strong supporter of the Daylight Saving Bill and wrote a post called An Open Letter to my MP About Changing to Central European Time.
I’ve also got a strange skin that I wrote about in My Strange Skin.
Homerton Hospital Is Bottom Of The List
In The Times today, there is an article, which is entitled Ambulance List Shows NHS Trust With The Worst Delays.
My local hospital is Homerton and it gets a very honourable mention.
At the other end of the scale, four trusts accepting patients by ambulance reported no delays of more than an hour, led by Homerton University Hospital in east London.
It is interesting that Homerton is down as one of the best.
My GP reckons it has improved greatly in the last few years. He also says, that they seem to have more spare capacity, than the other hospitals in the area.
The hospital removed my gallstones using endoscopy and I walked out to a waiting car. I could have taken the bus, if required.
I also had a knee X-rayed, where the GP gave me a chit and told me to just turn up unannounced in one of two specific three-hour periods. I was in and out in just over ten minutes.
Homerton seem to be thinking hard about their organisation and methods.
Could this be why they are the best on the list?
So what is our South London Mayor doing to improve transport to this much improved hospital?
He’s cutting out, one of the major bus routes to the hospital.
Have I Lived All My Life With A Leaky Heart Valve?
A few days ago, whilst looking for an old post, I came across this post called Medical Progress.
This was a paragraph.
On Wednesday the stroke doctor had told me that I had a leaky valve. Now sometimes I think I can tell when it starts to leak. Or am I imagining things. I just push myself too hard and then I get a bit breathless, but if I get a rhythm going, I can pedal for over an hour. Especially in Holland, where they have abolished hills by law.
Normally, I remember most of the posts I have written, but as it was twelve years ago, I think I can be excused forgetting it.
A couple of years ago, I had some heart scans that appear to be puzzling doctors, or at least one, who sent me a copy of an internal mail.
I wonder whether you could arrange a stress echo for this gentleman who transthoracic echo results are confusing. One GP echo suggested mild/moderate AS with a vmax which was inconsistent with this and a Barts echo suggested severe AS by valve area (0.9) but again a low vmax. It was suggested that this was low flow AS but the LV function is only mildly down so this does not really hang together. He does seem to have moderate MR on his most recent echo and a history of AF (on Warfarin).
He has no symptoms attributable to Aortic Valve disease.
Would a stress echo help here and if so would you be able to do this please. I’d value your opinion.
The outcome was that I went for the stress test. It was confirmed, that I had a leaking valve, but it wasn’t that serious and I didn’t have the stress test. It’s described in My Cardiac Echo Stress Test.
Conclusion
I am tempted to believe, that I’ve always had the leaky valve. Is that possible?
But then my medical history is a bit strange. Read My Unusual Body for a bit of background.
Five Million Britons Invited To Take Part In World’s Biggest Health Study
The title of this post is the same as that of this article in The Times.
These two paragraphs outline the study.
Five million Britons are set to be invited to take part in one of the world’s most ambitious health projects as scientists seek ways to catch and treat disease earlier.
Our Future Health programme, a collaboration between the NHS, academics and the private sector, is an attempt to find ways to make a difference to people’s health sooner by monitoring millions of people as they age.
Note.
- Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford will lead the project.
- Three million invitations are set to go out this autumn.
- The aim is to recruit five million participants by 2025.
Count me in!
East Kent Maternity Deaths: Babies Might Have Survived With Better Care
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the first paragraph.
Up to 45 babies might have survived if they had received better care at East Kent NHS Hospitals Trust, a damning independent review has found.
As a father of three, who has experienced the death of both his wife and youngest son, I know that this is a tragedy for too many families.
But episodes like these seem to come along regularly in the NHS. We have had two cases, where nurses were murdering babies, the notorious Harold Shipman and several abuse cases in mental health.
Is the monitoring of the outcome of patient treatment up to scratch?
In the 1970s, I was asked to do some programming for Bob, who was the Chief Management Accountant of Lloyds Bank and before that he had been Chief Accountant of Vickers. Bob had very definite ideas about how to ascertain the performance of various divisions and departments in a company or organisation.
He taught me a lot as we applied his ideas to check out the performance of various branches in the Bank. A lot of his experience was incorporated into Artemis and other programs I have written.
One of the things we did with bank branches was to plot groups of branches in simple scatter diagrams, so that those with problems stood out.
Does the government do similar things with hospitals and GP surgeries?
I even went as far as to suggest that my software Daisy could be used to find rogue practitioners like Harold Shipman. I was thanked for my submission to the report, but was not told my ideas were mentioned in the report.
Conclusion
I believe that more babies might have survived in Kent, if a statistician had been comparing results between hospital trusts and actively looking for problems.
I suspect the reason, there is no serious analysis, is that there is a belief in the NHS, that no-one ever makes mistakes or is evil.
The Anonymous Widower 