More on the CoE

I published several months ago a long diatribe about why I left the CoE.

Anyway several people either left or reduced their committment after me, which left the department which in addition to their total inability to recruit anybody left them severely short of staff. This lead to them actually having to cancel ORs because there weren't enought anaesthesiologists. Now cancelling lists is not a new thing at the CoE. They cancel them all the time because of lack of nursing, because the surgeon was up all night transplanting, because there are no beds, because the single horrendoma booked in a room was cancelled etc etc. This is done frequently with very little angst. Of course when you find out a 0600 you aren't going to work, this hits you in the pocket book. (This is assuming there actually have the courtesy to call you at home which is unusual, they normally wait until you show up or better still make you wait for 2 hours before they decide they can't do anything.) It was when I found I was actually happy when I found my list was cancelled that I realized that maybe I should leave.

But when they have to cancel cases because of no anaesthesia it suddenly becomes a crisis.

So they brought in two academic anaesthesiologists to do yet another external review. I have no idea of what this two charged but I'm sure it was worth their while. They produced a long report. The first half of the report where they went over all the problems at the CoE could have been written by me, except the my spelling and grammar would have been better. The second half where they proposed solutions was completely out of touch with reality. The bottom line was that instead of seeing how they could make the CoE a more attractive place to work at, they focused on how they could make the other places in the city less attractive.
The other interesting thing was that they came all the way out to Edmonton and didn't bother speaking with any of the anaesthesiologists who actually left who might have some insight into the situation.

Of course they could have just stayed home and read my blog. I wouldn't have charged them.