Here’s a little update on the process of booking Matthew Syed for a two-day Master Class run by The Campbell Academy next year that I blogged about here.
Some of you showed interest and we were getting going with it – more of an update on that later.
But first, consent (and it does tie in, at least I think)
In 2015 the law on medical (dental) consent changed with a ruling in the Supreme Court in the case of Montgomery versus Lanarkshire Health Board.
Essentially (and this is all in the public domain) in 1999 Sam Montgomery was born to a Diabetic mother and suffered a complication during birth which led to compression of his umbilical cord which led to a significant disability.
If I sound like I know what I’m talking about here it’s only because in our recent Master Class Professor John Gibson from Glasgow taught me very, very well.
It’s known that Diabetic mothers can have larger babies and larger babies can cause complications but at the time the law was very clear on the fact that complications that occur less then 10% of the time didn’t need to be discussed. What’s staggering about that from my point of view is that I didn’t realise that and we talked about all sorts of low level complications for years in our consent process but that’s neither here nor there.
The complication that occurred in Sam’s case was quoted at 9% so below the threshold but when Mrs Montgomery discovered this she decided that the law was not good enough and after one trip to the court of session in Edinburgh which she didn’t win, she went to the Supreme Court in London and won.
The long and the short of it now is this….
As healthcare professionals we are required and obligated to explain to patients the risk of complications that they themselves might find significant. It is our responsibility to ‘get to know’ our patients well enough to understand what is significant to them and therefore explain the process to them in a way that is tailor made.
While this might sound onerous, it is right and proper that we should do this and although the Law Lords have acknowledged that this will lead to a significant increase in the amount of time required to consent patients across healthcare it is the law of the land and the way of things now and it must be done. Your consent process must be designed in order to provide this for patients and that is a different blog post altogether.
The difficulty here is one that we encounter through healthcare all the time and that is that the bar of information sharing for us is much higher than it is in other factors of life, some of which are no less significant.
If we want Doctors (read Dentists) to continue to act as healthcare professionals and to be conferred the status of professionals and the benefits therein then we must work within this framework to the best of our ability, but we must also consider our patients to be patients and not customers. In that circumstance, patients themselves must consider themselves patients and not customers and, as I’ve said many times in these pages, it is unfair and unreasonable to expect the benefits of both which are very different.
And so to Matthew Syed and a lesson in how not to present a treatment plan to a patient in healthcare…
My great friend Gregor sent me a flyer for Matthew Syed for a course that was being run in London and for which I was very interested. The price of the course was around £1,500 for two days. On the flyer though it also suggested that bespoke packages could be provided and I was excited about the prospect of perhaps bringing Matthew Syed to Nottingham to run something specific for The Campbell Academy and the blog that we presented suggested that might be possible following initial contact.
I then underwent some discussion with ‘Matthew’s people’ where the lady explained to me the structure of the two days which sounded absolutely fantastic with workshops, lectures and loads of information sharing in new concepts for day one and similar for the first half of day two until she hit the money shot “in the afternoon of day two is when we bring Matthew in on the pre-recorded videos”
So the two day Matthew Syed Master Class that we were looking at doesn’t actually have Matthew Syed at all. Now at least she told me this before we booked (for £17,000 for two days) but I couldn’t help but feel that Matthew’s brand had been slightly tarnished, certainly in my eyes. I understand that he is a busy man, writing for the Times, writing is fourth book and Keynote speaking and I suppose on reflection thought it would be extraordinary if we could get him here for two days, but I don’t think that I mistook the information and the message from the flyer, I think they were just a little bit economical with the facts in the hope to pull you into a sales process that you then won’t back out of.
Needless to say I won’t be asking dentists to attend for £1,500 for two days to watch some Matthew Syed’s videos, most of the information of which you would be able to get from listening to his audio books repeatedly I guess but it brings me to the tie up for Montgomery consent versus Syed.
The guys in the marketing agency that were promoting Matthew Syed do not have to get to know me as a person before offering me a package and understanding what risks I think are significant. The way they advertised to get me in to have that discussion can, within reason, be any way they want.
For me in healthcare this is different but it’s also different in healthcare education because we advertise Master Classes too. I am very conscious of the fact that we have to be very clear and very open about what people are expecting and what we’re expecting to give them so nobody attends my clinic or my courses with anything other than an absolutely clear and honest view of what they will be receiving.
It just demonstrates that it’s hard to work in a world where everything else I buy doesn’t seem to have the same kind of regulation and rules associated with it as the thing that I ‘sell’. It’s not that I’m complaining about this, it’s just sometimes difficult to continually have to readapt yourself to two different ways of thinking.
Note – sorry to the guys who expressed an interest in the Matthew Syed Master Class. Not this time!
Blog Post Number - 1274