Honest noble Lord Darzi on the surgical checklist

One thing this government and its minions could not be accused of is reinventing the wheel and then claiming it as their own invention. For example we all know that Lord Darzi was the first man to ever use laparoscopic surgery, even though he was born in 1960, he has magical time travelling powers, the man is simply a great surgical pioneer, he would never be described as a politically minded brown noser who happens to have published a lot of papers.

This week Lord Darzi has been talking about a 'surgical checklist' that the World Health Organisation (WHO) have come up with:

"Health Minister Lord Darzi, who played a role in developing the checklist, said: "The beauty of the surgical safety checklist is its simplicity and - as a practising surgeon - I would urge surgical teams across the country to use it.

"Operating theatres are high-risk environments. By using the checklist for every operation we are improving team communication, saving lives and helping ensure the highest standard of care for our patients.

"The amazing results from the global pilot puts this beyond any doubt." "

Thanks for that honest and full description of the situation Lord Darzi, you really are a man of great integrity and honour, you wouldn't possibly be trying to spin things to enhance your own importance would you? Are you reinventing the wheel, again?

The study has many limitations and is poorly designed for one, even the paper admits a lot of this, something the media fail to mention, very strange that, the BBC just describe it as being a 'startling' phenomenon. In fact the study took eight hospitals from eight very different countries and made the assumption that this sample can be representative for any hospital in any country in the world, it doesn't stop there though, in the four hospitals from the wealthier countries there was not a statistically significant difference in complication rates in three of the four hospitals. While the hospital from the UK, St Marys, recently made on of the biggest errors in medical history by removing a women's healthy gallbladder for no good reason, I believe the great Lord is an honorary consultant there too. There are other flaws that the paper explains in the discussion section. It becomes rather obvious that drawing conclusions from this study and applying them in blanket fashion to the whole NHS is just plain stupid.

If you listen to Lord Darzi then it appears that the checklist is a revolutionary idea, in fact all good hospitals in the Uk will already be doing everything on the checklist For example where I work it would be considered bad practice to not be doing the routine checks on the WHO's list. Lord Darzi however has not been defending the fact that many hospitals are well above introducing a checklist when they already have the checklists in place!

He has been concentrating on blowing his own trumpet, pretending that this research is ground breaking when it is not, and spinning the agenda of the government that involves continually belittling what others have done well before him. He made no attempt to reassure patients that many hospitals in the UK are already doing these checks, he deliberately pretended that this checklist was revolutionary and in doing this a lot of people will get much more anxious than they should about surgery in the NHS.

Lord Darzi has gone from being a surgeon to a politician, he has no interest in responsibly getting the facts of a an argument across in the best interests of science or people's health, he is just keen to further his own political career by blowing his own trumpet whenever he has the chance. A responsible scientist would try to emphasise the grey areas and the limitations of various pieces of research, an irresponsible politician goes away from science by spinning only one agenda that is not based on the scientific evidence. Lord Darzi is no more than a politician dressed up in a fake surgical gown.