Apparently, A&E departments across the country aren’t probing into peoples’ lives enough:
Most A&E departments in England do not identify problem drinkers or offer them long-term help when they seek treatment, a study says.
Really? There’s a surprise.
A survey of all casualty departments, published in Emergency Medicine Journal, found 87% did not ask any questions about alcohol consumption.
Another staggering statement of the entirely predictable.
This did not appear to affect treatment on the spot, but meant people were not offered sources of long-term help.
Well, I should hope that it doesn’t affect on the spot treatment – that’s what A&E is for, after all.
Only four of the 191 hospitals formally assessed dangerous drinking.
Why is that, I wonder? Because the medics are too busy patching ’em up and shipping ’em out to make way for the next one, I suspect.
“Research has found that up to 40% of people attending A&E departments would benefit from help or advice about their drinking,” said the study, conducted by Bob Patton of the National Addiction Centre.
“Yet as staff are not using formal screening tools to measure alcohol-related harm, the hazardous drinkers may not get the help they need because they aren’t being asked questions about their alcohol use.”
Okay, all facetiousness aside, there’s a serious point or two here. Firstly, while A&E deal with immediate care, it is not – nor should it be – their responsibility to get involved with long term care. Sure, if they have the time, then advice is all well and good if such advice helps prevent a revisit. However, we are talking about an addictive substance and the suggestion being made is that it is the addicts who need this help…
Let’s follow the reasoning.
If you had a couple of beers and had an accident on the way home or were physically attacked, you probably wouldn’t want addiction counselling or questions about your intake because you are not an addict and if you were an addict, you’d probably be too far under to be taking any rational part in the process anyway. So what use is screening or advice in this situation? Or is the sub-text here that people will get “help” whether they want it or not? Therein lies a rocky road to disaster.
Bob Patton, being associated with the national addiction centre should know a thing or two about addiction, one would think. In which case, he will realise that no one can help the addict. The only “cure” for addiction is abstinence and the addict has to do it all by themselves. Any help has to be initiated by the addict otherwise it simply will not work. Trying to talk to someone about their addiction while they are still under the influence is a waste of time. The addict will say anything, do anything, to hide the addiction – even when it is blindingly obvious. They simply withdraw into denial. Any hope that exploring their lifestyle and drinking habits will be met with an honest, truthful reply from the intoxicated addict in A&E is pure pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. As a waste of busy medics’ time, this is perhaps one of the best I’ve seen suggested so far.
While on the subject of drinking, I notice that Neil Harding has picked up Liam Donaldson’s baton and decided to run with it.
Alcohol (as a percentage of disposable income) is cheaper than for 50 years. If Brown wants to look at the causes of binge drinking he needs to look no further than the price.
Er, no. Sorry, this is the same simplistic thinking that Donaldson was suggesting with exactly the same simplistic solution (more tax if you weren’t already ahead of us at the back, there). Although unlike Donaldson, Neil does not want to return to the idiotic licensing laws of yore.
The proposals to regulate supermarket deals on alcohol, increase taxes on alcohol and increase the age to 21 for off-licence purchases are the right way to go if we want to tackle problem drinkers
You were expecting that one, of course. I pause here to consider the conundrum of being able to vote but not able to go and buy a beer at the offy…
Now, I agree with Neil’s desire to be able to enjoy a quiet drink mulled with good company and intelligent conversation; who wouldn’t? But taxing everyone for the behaviour of the few is disproportionate. The suggestion that cheap alcohol is the problem – and, indeed, any suggestion that this is in some way a new phenomenon – is single dimensional. Britain has been the drunkard of Europe for centuries and alcohol has been cheap before. The terms used may be new; “antisocial drinking” and “binge drinking” for example, but it’s been going on as long as the grape and the grain have been brewed and distilled and is likely to continue while politicians kick around the symptoms with more regulation and taxation.
The curious phenomenon seems to be that it is an Anglo Saxon thing. Alcohol is cheap across the channel – that’s why people flock across there on booze runs, but the continentals don’t have the same attitudes and culture. Alcohol is cheap and freely available and is drunk by young and old alike at any time of the day without ill-effect. It is, therefore, perfectly possible to have sensible drinking without taxing it to oblivion. I would also point out that illegal substances aren’t exactly cheap, but that doesn’t stop people becoming addicted to them, nor does it prevent them funding their habit through crime. Do the “tax alcohol more” brigade really believe that this will follow a different pattern?