Are The Words ‘No, Love, It’s Supposed To Look Like That’ So Hard Then..?

GPs should not refer women who are well but worried for female genital cosmetic surgery on the NHS, say experts.

Well, duh!

Specialists at a Central London teaching hospital say they received 30 such referrals, mainly from family doctors, over the past three years.

This included eight schoolgirls - one as young as 11 - the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology reports.

Experts say doctors need clear guidance on how best to care for women who mistakenly believe they need surgery.

Sorry, why? Don’t they do five years at medical school? How hard can it be?

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons says medics need to determine whether a problem exists or whether an alternative solution may be preferable, but offers no advice on how to judge the problem, say the researchers from University College London's Women's Health Institute.

If it’s not an actual clinical problem, what sort of advice should you need?

They say it may be simpler to ban the procedure in the NHS altogether, leaving it to private practices.

Well, I’m all for this on cost grounds, actually, but then what about those who do have a real, clinical problem? Where do they go?

I mean, good grief, why is it so bloody hard for supposed ‘professionals’ to just do the damned job they are paid for?

Dr Sarah Creighton and colleagues believe the future demand for so-called "designer vagina" operations or labial reductions is potentially infinite and is driven by society's wider and growing desire for cosmetic surgery in general and changing expectations about what is a desirable appearance for women.

Yes, you can certainly blame the media and women’s magazines and fads started by the permatanned chavs of Essex and Cheshire for the desire for such surgery.

But you can’t blame the GPs’ reluctance to address those issues with their patients, and to send them for unnecessary and costly surgery on the NHS, on that.

Can you?

The Fundamental Problem With Nursing...

Sir Stephen Moss, chairman of Stafford Hospital and himself a nurse for 40 years, said that “too many patients and families” are being let down but that staff shortages are not to blame.

He suggested the problems lie in the training nurses receive as well as the way they work on hospital wards, and plans to lead a new campaign to improve standards.

I take it ‘the way they work on hospital wards’ is code for ‘they should put down ‘Heat’ magazine occasionally and check to see if elderly patients are starving to death’?

Unions and professional bodies have suggested that the problems are down to staff being over-worked or forced to focus on Government targets rather than providing personal care.

Because if it wasn’t for the government telling them how to do every tiny small task, they’d be completely unable to understand that patients need to be fed and floors need to be washed?

But other commentators have claimed that too much care is now provided by cheap healthcare assistants, who do not need to meet national training standards and who are not regulated by a professional body; or that nurses think they are “above” feeding and cleaning patients now that they have to be university-educated.

Surely not!

Sir Stephen is drawing together a group of seven “big hitters” in the health service to suggest ways that hospital care can be improved.

Their plans, to be disclosed in September, will focus on how nurses can be trained for “the real world of the NHS rather than the classroom” .

I can’t say this isn’t welcome, but I fear it’s too little, and far too late.