Doctors and other Health Professionals – dealing with generally 1

After you’ve seen a doctor or other health professional, if you can’t send them a letter by means of an ordinary email address, or, at the very least, an email form, along the lines of, “In my consultation with you today I understood you to say blah blah blah! Is there anything important I’ve left out?” and not get a helpful reply, even if it’s just a, “Yes and no,” then, all things being equal, you should never bother with them again. And if they haven’t got at least an email form, you shouldn’t have been bothering with them in the first place. To us, this has become SO SO basic!

One of our readers keeps telling us how bitter he is that he didn’t realise this five years ago when he started dealing with Andrew Brooks, Urologist, (who should be in gaol, along with the GP, Chris Grant, who referred him to Brooks,) as he’s subsequently learnt that Brooks has probably never responded to an email in his whole life – except, of course, the ones referring to the mechanics of paying him his exorbitant fees.

As we’ve mentioned before, as an excuse for not responding to emails he was required by law to provide responses to, Brooks has even claimed that the email address on his website, (since taken down,) was set up so that it “weeded out” emails from patients so that he didn’t receive them, (a set up technology experts tell us can’t be done,) – an excuse he gave to a brain dead NSW Privacy Commissioner, who’s response was, “Oh yes! Dr Brooks, I accept this as a perfectly acceptable excuse.” Of course!

Our reader says that, if he’d done this, Brooks wouldn’t have been able to get away with not telling him that there was a 20% chance the solution he was recommending to the problem he had of having to get up 2 or 3 times during the night to urinate, and in fact carried out, was an operation that wouldn’t work, (something he put in writing, AFTER the operation,) but that it would inevitably largely detract from his sex life for the rest of his life – it can’t be reversed.

After our reader says that, to get supposed help from Brooks, he’d undergone an operation under a full anaesthetic, which always has it’s risks, he’d spent 2 uncomfortable days in hospital, he’d suffered consequences which would largely diminish his sex life for the rest of his life, which were inevitable, and can’t be reversed, all at a cost of more than $6,000, including Brook’s $3,2oo fee for less than an hour’s work, none of which had helped with his frequency problem, the only thing Brooks could say in his defence, even though he didn’t have anything in writing to confirm this, was that he’d explained to our reader that all this could happen, and our reader had said that he still wanted to go ahead – what else could he say?

In relation to this, one of the reasons our reader says he’s never complained to Sue Dawson, the NSW Health Care Complaints Commissioner about Brooks, is that he says he knows what Brooks would say, something like – “I explained to Mr XXX that the inevitable consequence of me carrying out the operation I was recommending was that his sex life would be largely ruined for the rest of his life and he told me that he didn’t care a scrap about this, so long as it saved him from getting up an extra one or two times a night to go the toilet,” and he also knows, from bitter experience, what Dawson’s response would be – however unlikely it might seem that such a conversation had taken place, Dawson and her people would believe Brooks, and wouldn’t believe our reader’s claims that such a conversation hadn’t taken place, in a million years. Brooks would have the last laugh! So many emails have been sent to her, over the years, but it seems she couldn’t care less about anything.

No wonder our reader says he often thinks Dawson should be in gaol as well.

What a mess!

We’ve been working on this sort of thing for more than 11 years now, never worked so hard  in our lives, and we’ve really given up on thinking that anything much is going to change – it’s the people, you and I, who have to change.

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