Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!wtm
From: dmimi@uncecs.edu (Mimi Clifford)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: VA Hospitals
Message-ID: <14944@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 12 Oct 90 18:24:22 GMT
Sender: wtm@bunker.UUCP
Reply-To: dmimi@uncecs.edu (Mimi Clifford)
Distribution: misc
Lines: 20
Approved: wtm@bunker.UUCP

Index Number: 11083

I have been interested in the dialog about the VA and find the same
arguments crop up in regard to other medical/psychological issues
from time to time.  Namely, people seem to want 'caring' from those
taking care of them.  Now, I'd be the last to want to be seeing
someone who is cold, and who doesn't seem to respect me and my
feelings, but, even more than caring, I want him/her to be expert
at whatever he/she is advising me about.  I'd rather have a surgeon
who is REALLY GOOD with a knife and diagnosis and who is an sob as
a person than one who is the opposite, for example.  Same with
audiologists, orthopods, etc., etc., etc.  The VA may or may not
have as expert personnel as other medical facilities, but they do
seem to be grossly overloaded and to have rather poor salery and
other monetary support.  If I had a choice, Id go elsewhere.  The
biggest problem, of course, is how to find out if a particular
individual is good or not, and I don't know the answer to that
one.  By good, I mean expert at whatever I'm consulting him/her
about.  Asking a different 'good' expert for a referral is one way,
but not always successful either.