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Comment Re:Need a prescription. (Score 1) 45

A few things to note...

Over the past couple of decades, more and more roles within the British healthcare system have become able to prescribe - pharmacists (as noted in the summary), nurse prescribers, physicians associates (who technically should be under the supervision of a GP, but the way the NHS has that set up its very much a "PA prescribes, GP actually has little say")...

The role of doctors in the British healthcare system is being diminished and replaced by lower paid, lower trained positions, and GPs are particularly hard hit by it - which is why GPs are retiring or moving overseas at record rates, far beyond the ability for the current GP training schemes to replace them.

The UK is actively doctor hostile these days, and British doctors do not want to be part of it any more.

It's not just in Britain. All across the West, there's a shortage of native-born doctors. The expense and hassle of getting an MD is bad enough. Then you also have the modern stresses of being an MD (which in America, includes a highly litigious culture where doctors have to get maddeningly expensive malpractice insurance). The workload is huge, and the money is only good for the hyper-specialists now. The home-grown family doctor is an endangered species in the US, and we're addressing it in two ways: handing doctor duties to those lower on the chain, and importing doctors from the third world. Every single new doctor at my not-large Southern US hospital in the past three years has come from 3 places: India, Pakistan, or East Africa. This of course, robs those areas of badly needed doctors. And it doesn't really matter if your system is private or nationalized. Look at the ranks of doctors that staff your local services. You'll see similarities everywhere in the West: there's fewer of them, and they tend to come from overseas.

Comment Re:Not as important as bringing back flashcards (Score 1) 157

There was an educational movement just after 2000 where for some reason teachers decided that rote learning was bad, so the activists within the ranks of teachers went through and got rid of everything that was strictly memorization and practice-based. This included everything from phonics to flash cards and of course cursive. In fact I think keyboarding was also a victim. My kids didn't take any of these things in school (we're in Ontario, Canada). Their handwriting is awful.

The best schools always included a mix of techniques in teaching. You had "drill 'till it kills" in math, THEN you had logic and reasoning exercises. You had memorization of names and dates, THEN you had deep discussions of historical events. A good education includes both rote and discussion, and always has.

Comment Re:It a guidebook... (Score 5, Insightful) 157

How to watch republicans piss away taxpayer money on utterly useless crap, trying to get back to a past that time forgot...

Oh FFS. There are lots of knowledge that isn't "practical" yet is valuable to our culture. You people piss and moan about children not being properly educated, but when someone suggests that things like cursive writing and other finer points of civilization should continue to be taught, you scoff with bullshit like this.

My mother's generation had mandatory classes in Latin during high school in the early 1960's. As a culture, we're the poorer for having dropped those kinds of requirements. There's a reason the finer schools still require them. I'm all for more of a focus on the practical for kids... more shop classes, more practical math (loans and interest, basic accounting, etc), but to suggest that we should chuck all of the finer points of culture into the trash because it's "trying to get back to a past that time forgot" is complete and utter horseshit.

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