Who Needs Jayant Patel?

Around 500 people die in Australia each year as a result of gunshot wounds (mostly suicides). Just over 1600 died in 2005 in road traffic accidents.

Doctors demand gun control (15.5) and wag their fingers at us about road safety - and themselves kill around 18,000 Australians every year.

Now it's revealed they're screwing up 20 per cent of procedures in hospitals:

ONE in five people who undergoes surgery in Australian hospitals will require a second operation to fix complications caused by infections, medical errors and the poor quality of the new generation of hip and knee prostheses. Preventable medical problems were costing billions of dollars, driving up the cost of private health insurance and placing patients' lives at risk...

It was Dr Ross Wilson who revealed the 18,000 figure way back in 1995. Now Canberra Hospital's director of infectious diseases Peter Collignon is having a go at his sloppy colleagues:

"Doctors often justify it by saying, 'Well, there are sick patients in hospitals, so of course there are going to be infections'."

then draws one of the same parallels as above and raises an interesting point:

Professor Collignon said hospital-acquired infections caused significantly more deaths than road accidents. "When someone dies in a road accident, there's a thorough investigation that looks at what went wrong, but we don't do that for infection deaths."

Why not?

-- Nick

UPDATE: Ironically, the medical profession actually contributes to the road toll.