One of the things we’re always saying is that Ms Dawson and her people at the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission are geniuses at coming up with reasons why they should find that people who, while they may think they have a basis to complain about a NSW doctor, don’t, in fact, have one. And you couldn’t get a better example of this, than the following.
A couple of years ago, one of our readers had a face-to-face consultation with a doctor in a NSW Government Hospital in which he was given advice which left out something which could have been of considerable significance, (and which turned out later was of considerable significance,) and that when our reader realised this, he emailed the doctor asking for a comment, the doctor didn’t even acknowledge his email, and so, our reader, assuming that if it was of considerable significance, the doctor would have got back to him, decided it mustn’t have mattered after all, which could have ended in disaster, but, by shere luck alone, didn’t.
So what did Ms Dawson and her people come up with this time?
We believe our readers could have dozens of guesses, perhaps even hundreds, and still wouldn’t come up with what Ms Dawson and her people came up with.
Firstly, they declared that it was all the readers fault for taking any notice of what the doctor had said, when, according to the doctor, he’d specifically told his patient NOT to do this, but to get proper advice from someone else as soon as he possibly could – this when, (a) it wasn’t true, it was a lie, and when, (b) surely, if it was true, it would be a basis, in itself, for a successful complaint.
Secondly, that again it was all the readers’ fault – the doctor hadn’t got the reader’s email because he’d used an email address which was on the Sydney University’s website when he should have used the one which was available from AHPRA, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency – but when our reader emailed AHPRA to see, out of interest, whether this was so, he was told that AHPRA DIDN’T have an email address for the doctor concerned, and that they had no idea what the HCCC was talking about!!!???
We have two concerns about this.
Firstly, that Dawson could be emailed until the cows come home asking if she thought the handling of this complaint was good enough, and you wouldn’t even get a response. From which, to us it follows, that if she thought it WAS good enough, she shouldn’t continue being the Commissioner, and that if she thought it WASN’T good enough, but has done nothing about it, she shouldn’t continue being the Commissioner.
And secondly, and far more importantly, no one in the whole Berejiklian government seems to have any concerns about these goings on.
No readers, while Dawson remains the Commissioner, (and in October, 2020, she was granted a further 5 year term,) and NSW continues to have the Berejiklian Government in control, we have to get used to the idea that these goings on will continue and continue.