Interesting Facts

According to a survey conducted by the Daily Mail, in the UK 61,000 patients a day miss their GP appointment. (The lost time costs the NHS over £300 million, which is equivalent to a year's work for 1,300 doctors. Some surgeries run a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy, whereby patients are removed from the list if they miss several appointments. It is a bit of a Catch 22 situation though; many surgeries are so overbooked they can only offer slots two weeks in advance, so often the appointment is missed because the patient is "feeling better".  But if they had the courtesy to pick up the phone and cancel the appointment, there may not be a 2 week queue.)

According to NHS records, 12 million GP appointments are missed in the UK each year. (It costs £160 million a year, and who's to blame?  Young people. A simple solution might be to text them a reminder.)

Britons are increasingly seeking out elocution lessons in order to "get ahead". (Seemingly job seekers in the UK and even professionals like doctors and lawyers who want to climb the career ladder, worry their accents are holding them back.  Even parents worry that their children will miss out on places at elite schools unless they speak “posh.” Some tutors are charging up to 80 quid an hour for their services! I'm in the wrong job.)

The NHS (National Health Service) in the UK, received more than 162,000 complaints about care in 2012/13 – around 3,000 every week. (A recent (2013) report into the NHS and its handling of complaints recommended that all NHS patients should have a pen and paper by their hospital bed for writing down complaints. I would have thought having a nurse, interested in their well-being, near their hospital bed would be more useful.)

According to a survey conducted by Mothercare, when British children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, more boys than girls dreamt of becoming dancers, the girls wanted to be footballers. (Children aged between two and 12,were asked what they wanted to be, and the following careers proved most popular:- Doctor (9%) Footballer (8%) Teacher (8%) Dancer (6%) Police officer (5%) Firefighter (4%) Scientist (4%) Musician (4%) Actor (2%) Nurse (2%) The top 5 jobs for boys:- Doctor (11%) Footballer (10%) Dancer (8%) Teacher (6%) Police officer (6%) The top 5 jobs for girls:- Doctor (8%) Teacher (8%) Footballer (7%) Dancer (5%) Police officer (5%) What? No lawyers? The future is looking bright.)

According to a study commissioned by Littlewoods.com, mothers are the most quizzed people in the UK. (Mothers are asked about 300 questions a day, in fact they are asked more questions per hour than a primary school teacher (19) even doctors and nurses only have to cope with 18 questions an hour. The study also discovered that girls around the age of 4 are the most curious, asking an incredible 390 questions a day; that's about one question every 2 minutes. From breakfast at 7.19am to tea time at 7.59pm, the average mum faces a testing 12.5 hour day of questioning - working out at one question every two minutes 36 seconds. The toughest questions asked are:- 1) Why is water wet? (35 per cent) 2) Where does the sky end? (34 per cent) 3) What are shadows made of? (33 per cent) 4) Why is the sky blue? (20 per cent) 5) How do fish breathe under water? (18 per cent) Maybe I'll ask these in the next LEN Quiz session on Kitely.)

A newly discovered letter reveals that doctors knew about the risk tobacco posed to people's health as early as the 18th century. (Medical student William Adams, wrote to his father in 1799 saying how he feared his mother's pipe-smoking habit was harmful. He said tobacco had a narcotic power, and its use destroyed digestion. Adams, who was studying in Edinburgh, also referred to a case where a woman had died after being given the wrong dose of tobacco by a chemist.)

According to a survey carried out by    insureblue.co.uk, in the UK one in five men has 'not visited a doctor in the last year. (Other even more worrying results where that 6% of the men asked wouldn't visit a doctor even if they had chest pains and 2% had never even seen a doctor!   I don't know if it's the same in other countries, or it's just UK men who think if you ignore it, it will go away.) Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1365977/One-men-visited-doctor-year-wouldnt-chest-pains.html#ixzz1GaedJURb

Doctors at CPS research have said that as life becomes more hectic and we are overloaded with information we are becoming more forgetful. (They've even given the condition an abbreviated name SCI (Subjective Cognitive Impairment).  So, if you've been getting forgetful, you now know what it's called - just as long as you can remember it.)