Why are more medics treating the same number of patients as before the pandemic? Because the tools we’re using are ancient
It was a bright hot day in August, and the heaters were stuck on full blast. A nurse on the acute medical ward bleeped my pager. The heart of a patient I’d seen that morning had started palpitating. Soon, my heart was racing too, not out of solidarity but from the seven flights of stairs I had to sprint up. One half of our ward had been relocated seven flights away from the other, after flakes of asbestos started falling from the ceiling.
Squinting over a trace of the patient’s heart rhythm, I suspected the culprit was potassium – that salt we need just the right amount of, Goldilocks-style, to keep beating. If it’s too high or too low, you’ve got a real problem. A straightforward blood test would contain the information I needed. I travelled across the building to one of just two blood gas analyser machines in the hospital and queued impatiently, only to find its potassium-reading function was not working.
Dr Parth Patel is a senior fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research
