Among other things? Short shift requirements. None of the "80 hour weeks, 20 hour shifts" nonsense that still plagues the US health system today. The human mind can only handle 4-6 hours of intense focus at a time before performance decreases.
How do you solve the manpower shortage? Arrange for more providers. PAs and NPs have been around since the 60s in the US.
Can we do electronic healthcare records? Getting off of paper will be good.
Basic first aid, nutrition, and exercise programs (not the mandatory NorK calesthenics but a variety of available things...once again the "get people outside building national parks program" looks good, but other things too.)
A possible usefull thing would be to suppressed and demystified certain harmful traditional medicine tricks, prevented people from drinking lead filings infusion, snorting rhinoceros horn powder or avoiding real treatment because they have been told to have magic crystals inserted into theyr orifices.
Be careful not to delete useful stuff or make a part of the local culture disappear.
A possible usefull thing would be to suppressed and demystified certain harmful traditional medicine tricks, prevented people from drinking lead filings infusion, snorting rhinoceros horn powder or avoiding real treatment because they have been told to have magic crystals inserted into theyr orifices.
Be careful not to delete useful stuff or make a part of the local culture disappear.
James Randi is about to go nuclear on Uri Geller, if that portion of OTL remains for TTL. A similar sort of "let's see what this is" approach to things like powdered rhino horn (as an example), and then pointing out that the contents are roughly the same as toenail clippings, though that doesn't mean you should go snorting your toenails either.
A possible usefull thing would be to suppressed and demystified certain harmful traditional medicine tricks, prevented people from drinking lead filings infusion, snorting rhinoceros horn powder or avoiding real treatment because they have been told to have magic crystals inserted into theyr orifices.
Be careful not to delete useful stuff or make a part of the local culture disappear.
On this note, it might be nice to have a research group specifically consulting people on and testing cultural and folk remedies. Some such tricks are just harmful, yes, but many of them may have some basis in reality. If we can find that out and work out WHY they work, that could be a synergistic boon.
Health based publicly available courses would be good too, in multiple formats. Just a community training program, workplace training, add some basic lessons into school, that sorta thing. We already have people from different age demographics doing different things; if we're going to increase awareness and teach practical skills it's important to try and share that with everyone.
There's potential for a lot of very useful stuff in traditional medicine from that area.
See, in the west, herblore and that sort of thing was the traditional provenance of women, and when the Enlightenment came along and people started codifying medical stuff... well, it wasn't women doing the codifying. So we've lost a huge body of medical knowledge as a result.
In the east this same knowledge wasn't as gendered, and they did a much better job of recording the various treatments that had been found by trial and error to work. There's a whole field these days that concerns itself with examining folk medicine and trying to reverse engineer the active compounds so they can be used in modern pharmaceuticals.
Personally, I would be very interested in a segment of medical funding being put towards things that are underexplored by other countries due to rarity making treating and curing them unprofitable, or the issues themself being seen as 'typical'. Things like Fibromyalgia, endometriosis, migraine, immune disorders and so on. But that seems like something to tackle when the health system is less of a flaming wreckage
Expanded Prehospital care. Lots of small things could be handled by an ambulance and a paramedic if they were allowed to do it. I know the UK has been experimenting with this for a bit, and I believe they just started similar programs her in Toledo OH as well.
as someone who is both entirely ignorant of the healthcare system and what a good one looks like...I should prolly stay quiet on the matter..but on the other hand free meth.
Only idea have right now is that the ER and the more normal hospital staff should be a bit more independent from each other so they don't end up as a mishmashed chimera that is constantly fighting itself?
The nation of Guangchou had, to put it mildly, a massive problem regarding its medical sector, just barely slipping from a total collapse by the jaws of neglect via hasty actions that saw much money, work, and materials poured into the entire thing. Cuban students now worked around the clock to alleviate the worst of the effects of the neglect while native doctors, nurses, and other medical practitioners worked overtime to prepare the next batches of students for graduation or simply any kind of medical expertise so that they could be slotted into clinics and hospitals to help deal with the massive backlog of patients sometimes waiting up to several weeks to see a doctor, and maybe even months for a needed surgery. A state of affairs that couldn't stand anymore and one that the Great Leader had taken as a seemingly personal insult.
There couldn't be another reason why he had gathered the representatives and union leaders of all medical unions and medical providers in Guangchou, put them into one room, and told them to discuss how to reform the entire healthcare sector so that such a tragedy could never again be repeated. They hadn't beaten the forces of reaction within the nation only to fall to curable diseases and avoidable injuries.
He had left the room after dropping the bomb that the budget would not be their concern, walking away from a stunned crowd that soon locked gazes with each other when the doors closed behind the Great Leader.
In the following days, people rapidly fell behind the Nurse Unions, cowering in fear and gently rocking back and forth as they discussed what policies to set up and what the future of the medical sector would look like, alongside the education of new personnel.
[HEALTHCARE REFORM VOTE]
(Go wild. Whatever you want that can realistically be done in this 1981s version of the world, and you can implement that. Include what a hospital will be like, what the education of future doctors, nurses, surgeons, etc. will entail, and all the medical logistics hub-bub around the same. Note that I am writing this on less than 5 hours of consecutive sleep in two days and 8 in total.)
Just my two cents. Peer-reviewed medical research and regular seminars discussing new innovations, studies and more. Make these a regular part of medical professional life and we're guaranteed to remain as one of the most progressive and up-to-date medical communities in the world. Alongside regular funding ofc.
Also, as someone who has to work 8 hours for two consecutive days and 12 on every 3rd (with having to work 12 hour sundays as well if the sunday is that 3rd day) every week, i also highly recommend 8-hour working days, with three sets of staff cycling for each shift to cover a single day, for every medical professional and staff (at least and as soon as possible once the staffing shortages relax).
Above all else we need to ensure that being a medical professional isn't an endurance test.
So many problems are caused by doctors being entirely comprised of the kind of people who can survive the frankly insane residency program. You're not going to be getting much compassion and empathy for chronic symptoms when every doctor spends years grinding themselves to dust merely to qualify.
Agreed. Residency should stay around as the foundation is solid (highly skilled labor requires on the job training especially due to the deaths an inexperience doctor can cause), but the straight up abuse that it entails should absolutely be removed. This should also be part and parcel of the already suggested dialing back of doctor workload. This, ofc, means more doctors and nurses but the higher costs associated with that is worth every penny.
Agreed. Residency should stay around as the foundation is solid (highly skilled labor requires on the job training especially due to the deaths an inexperience doctor can cause), but the straight up abuse that it entails should absolutely be removed. This should also be part and parcel of the already suggested dialing back of doctor workload. This, ofc, means more doctors and nurses but the higher costs associated with that is worth every penny.
Something akin to residency is actually already baked into how our school system fuctions as the students get older. They switch to more specialized groups of 8 under the supervision of a subject matter expert in our equivalent of university IIRC.
Evening or part-time study programs for those who already have a job and want to become a doctor/nurse/surgeon/other could increase the number of potential student.
having the Hippocratic Oath (might be a little reworked for the local culture) and something to ensure general medical ethics would probably be a plus.
Perhaps a guide to medical plants that can be grown at home and the medicine/infusion/poultice/other that can be made with them.
edit:
Public stills so that people can make their own alcohol to disinfect, this could also improve the happiness of the population and the richness of the food cultural heritage (the drinkable part at least), if we do that it's probably a good idea to have a training and a certification necessary for the authorization to use the still to avoid poisoning with badly made alcohol.
We could go further and have public mini-breweries.
I think consistent medical communications outreach would be good. In times of normality, just standard docu's on what goes on, what's treated both medically and through social services etc, alongside adverts on standard health issues to prompt people to go to the doctor's if concerned. In times of crisis or emerging novel diseases (HIV, SARS etc) these can be easily repurposed to spread correct information and counteract reactionary messaging. I e. Events surrounding the gay panic with HIV or xenophobic messaging of SARS/COVID, plus preventing microchip truthers from gaining ground. People will think, hey, these channels helped me with X when I saw them talking about, maybe I shouldnt listen to Lee when they say Microsoft wants to put microchips in the vaccines so (((they))) can bring about a NWO.
They would be considered shockingly obsolete, and wouldn't offer any benefits that even a partial computerization wouldn't offer at half the price, and double the effectiveness.
Should standardize and try to establish domestic production of diagnostic machines. I think MRIs and CT scanners should be invented by now. And xrays appeared last century. Expensive, yes, but in time it'd help us make regular health screening and check-ups cheaper in the long run. More diseases discovered earlier means less expenses for patient healthcare down the road.
For technology reference, the first successful "portable" computers were released in 1981 in OTL. They were powered by wall sockets (no on-board battery), with a 5" monochrome CRT display and using 5.25" floppies for storage. It ran ~$2k in 1980s money (~6k today) and at 20x9x13" in size and 24 pounds it is not cheap or easy to maneuver.
Create procedures / organization / others that would be responsible for preventing the arrival across our borders via sick people, smugglers, stuff hidden in containers, etc.. of new species of animal diseases, plants, of insects and others, it will protect our ecosystem, will facilitate the eradication of disease and will save us from many crap, we could even prevent the arrival of AIDS in guangchou
Put in place emergency protocols to respond to disasters, accidents and epidemics,nd have people constantly looking for ways to improve them.
Decided on our law and regulation on addictive and psychotropic substances, maybe put in place the infrastructure and law so that people can indulge in it in the safest and least destructive way possible
Provide freely, anonymously and abundantly condoms, contraceptives, IUDs, abortion and others
Make the society and the infrastructure in general as suitable for the person with reduced capacity as possible and to provide them with what is needed to facilitate daily life.
Strict control of the dangerousness of the food (may be a label on the food/menu with a rating of 1 to 10, 10 being almost certain to die or get injured/become seriously ill and 1 almost non-existent chance of having anything whatever, so we increase food safety without stifling the small producer/restaurant who cannot afford the incredibly strict hygiene measures of the factories or restrict the freedom of those who want to do stupid things like eat fugu or a living octopus.)
Create procedures / organization / others that would be responsible for preventing the arrival across our borders via sick people, smugglers, stuff hidden in containers, etc.. of new species of animal diseases, plants, of insects and others, it will protect our ecosystem, will facilitate the eradication of disease and will save us from many crap, we could even prevent the arrival of AIDS in guangchou
Put in place emergency protocols to respond to disasters, accidents and epidemics,nd have people constantly looking for ways to improve them.
Decided on our law and regulation on addictive and psychotropic substances, maybe put in place the infrastructure and law so that people can indulge in it in the safest and least destructive way possible
Provide freely, anonymously and abundantly condoms, contraceptives, IUDs, abortion and others
Make the society and the infrastructure in general as suitable for the person with reduced capacity as possible and to provide them with what is needed to facilitate daily life.
Strict control of the dangerousness of the food (may be a label on the food/menu with a rating of 1 to 10, 10 being almost certain to die or get injured/become seriously ill and 1 almost non-existent chance of having anything whatever, so we increase food safety without stifling the small producer/restaurant who cannot afford the incredibly strict hygiene measures of the factories or restrict the freedom of those who want to do stupid things like eat fugu or a living octopus.)
I don't know how good our Customs office is, but that's probably their bailiwick.
Guangchou FEMA sounds like a good thing to establish--getting ahead of things is better than being behind.
We might have safe-use facilities? I'm not sure just how Epicurean / Libertine the GISS our cultural setup is, but that's good to ask.
I would be truly and deeply surprised if this wasn't already at least mostly in place.
Arranging for society and infrastructure to as minimally disable people with reduced capacity sounds like something we probably should have started having when we were throwing around large housings. But we can probably adapt things?
Food licensing levels like motor vehicle licensing levels is genuinely interesting and makes me wonder about arranging some degree of generalized preventive-health / actuary-calculation "activity hazardousness" bureau?
I do not envy whoever it is that ends up collating this into something coherent to present to HC, and I do not want to be that person.
I don't know how good our Customs office is, but that's probably their bailiwick.
Guangchou FEMA sounds like a good thing to establish--getting ahead of things is better than being behind.
We might have safe-use facilities? I'm not sure just how Epicurean / Libertine the GISS our cultural setup is, but that's good to ask.
I would be truly and deeply surprised if this wasn't already at least mostly in place.
Arranging for society and infrastructure to as minimally disable people with reduced capacity sounds like something we probably should have started having when we were throwing around large housings. But we can probably adapt things?
Food licensing levels like motor vehicle licensing levels is genuinely interesting and makes me wonder about arranging some degree of generalized preventive-health / actuary-calculation "activity hazardousness" bureau?
I do not envy whoever it is that ends up collating this into something coherent to present to HC, and I do not want to be that person.
