Yesterday’s post has made me think… Yesterday I mentioned about how the
microscopy of yesteryear has been replaced with more modern technology which is
much less subjective and much more objective.
And that’s partly answered a question I’ve been pondering for some time…
When I first started as a Junior (Grade "A")
medical laboratory scientific officer in September 1981 the (now demolished)
Royal East Sussex Hospital had one consultant haematologist. She would see out-patients
in the morning... sometimes as many as six patients in one morning.
Occasionally some patients were ill enough to be
hospitalized... she had up to four beds in the (also now demolished) St
Helen's Hospital in which these patients would stay, and she had an arrangement
with one of the consultant physicians that she might avail herself of the
services of the medical SHO *if* they weren't too
busy with their own work.
Three years later I moved to a nearby hospital where the
consultant haematologist had the use of pretty much all of the isolation ward
and had two dedicated SHOs of his own... Two. I counted them.
I Googled where I currently work... The most recent
information publicly availably says that we have nine consultant
haematologists, two specialist registrars and four SHOs.
Why so many? What has changed in the meantime...
Here’s a couple of articles which give the answer:
Fewer people are dying from preventable infections. Fewer
people are dying from heart disease and pulmonary conditions. Smoking and
drinking are in decline. Is that why over the past thirty years (globally)
cases of hematologic malignancies have been increasing?
But whether or not it is the reason, the death rates for
all types of hematologic malignancies has been declining.
We are getting better at what we do.
We’ve a lot more haematologists because we need them.
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