Sir, I never cease to be amazed at the arrogance of some GPs.
Dr Andrew Buist has raised with The Courier (July 3), his concern that Ninewells and PRI are sometimes not sending their communications direct to the referring GP, but rather to the GP practice in which the GP is based. This, he claims, causes additional work for GPs.
If the consultants do as he is demanding, the GPs will no doubt then complain if the referring GP is off ill, on leave or on a sabbatical.
It seems to me that since so many patients do not know the name of the GP they are registered with a response to the practice is the sensible approach.
I, for one, know that I am registered with a particular GP but over the past 20 years have never been offered an appointment with that individual.
All that is required is that a member of staff at the practice not a GP pulls up the patient’s computer file, establishes who made the referral and passes the consultant’s letter to that GP. Not rocket science, surely?
However, I suspect the real point is that the two minutes for a member of clerical staff to do that, multiplied by the number of referrals, may have a financial effect on the practice’s income.
My sympathies are entirely with our hard-pressed consultants on this one. Shame on the GPs for creating such a fuss in public over nothing.
Mrs E Foster. Emmock Woods Drive, Dundee.
Stretching ita bit far
Sir, I read, with no slight amusement, David Kelly’s letter of July 3 in which he extols the virtue of the NHS under Nationalist rule. I was amused at the typical “everything is wonderful” attitude displayed, as if Scotland was a modern Utopia under SNP management.
The NHS was a great institution long before devolution and will be so long after David Kelly’s pipedream of independence has withered on the vine.
If the NHS has reached new heights under the SNP why do patients routinely wait longer than the target period of 12 weeks for a hospital appointment after a referral from their doctors? Why was June Rankin of Kilmarnock left to pay for a life-saving drug because her local health board refused to do so because it was too expensive? Why have so many letters to GPs from Ninewells Hospital gone astray, as reported in The Courier?
Mr Kelly then makes a quantum leap by suggesting that because the SNP has done so well with the NHS, could they not do the same with Scotland under independence?
A neat trick, changing the emphasis of his letter to suggest that an independent Scotland could be such a Utopia under the SNP.
Sandy Brown. 25 Westerton Avenue, Broughty Ferry, Dundee.
Thought in other views
Sir, In his letter of July 8Alister Rankin comments on the TV programmes, The Rise of the Continents, as some kind of basis for criticising Christian belief.
I’m a Christian and I also enjoyed the programmes, although despite the fact they were well presented, they told some of us at least nothing new. Maybe Mr Rankin finds my Christianity and my acceptance of the ‘Rise’ as some kind of paradox?
I think this arises from the fact that the debate between atheist and Christian is so often conducted on simplistic terms or by attempting to use science as the determinant of the argument between faith and what is tangible.
An atheist, without proof, other than that he cannot see or experience God, is a simple believer in his theories, or with faith in those of others. However, a Christian, in the true, believing sense of the word, and who also cannot see his God, will tell you that he can and does experience the Deity.
That applies to a Christian with a simple belief in a six or eight thousand-year-old earth. It also applies to the Christian who sees the early chapters of Genesis as poetry, metaphor and parable, as vehicles for the exploration of meaning. Parable in particular was Jesus’ teaching method again to encourage examination of truths by his hearers.
On evolution, Mr Rankin, I don’t believe my God put the fossil remains in the ground to deceive us deception is not his attribute and I’ve been interested in fossil remains since I was a trilobite-collecting schoolboy.
So, maybe what I’ve had to say will give you pause for reflection and an opportunity to see that another point of view does have some thought behind it.
James Thomson. 14 Vardon Drive, Glenrothes.
Don’t let him take us there
Sir, The mindset of so many SNP supporters never fails to amaze me. To quote Winston Churchill: “A fanatic is one who can’t change their mind and won’t change the subject.”
No matter how wrong any actions by SNP leaders are, there is always a reason to believe they actually meant something else.
Wimbledon rules clearly state that flags greater than two feet square are prohibited inside the court. Yet Mr Salmond seems to assume rules never apply to him.
At the Aberdeen by-election, he made an unannounced visit to Bramble Brae Primary, where he spoke to a class without notifying either the head teacher or the local authority’s director of education of his intended arrival. Had any of us done that we’d have been up in court and possibly on an offenders’ register.
And this is the man who wants to lead us through that one-way door, where we can’t come back if we decide we don’t like it. Aye, right.
Howard Evans. 13 Links Parade, Carnoustie.