Flying Finns

The World Happiness Report and a study of mortuary mistakes have landed on the desk of Maurice Gueret, who wonders if we can learn lessons from Helsinki

Finland Finland

Monty Python’s comedy team, pictured, were a bit mean to Finland some years back. “You’re so sadly neglected, and often ignored, a poor second to Belgium, when going abroad.” But serious-minded Finns may be having the last laugh. The UN’s 2018 World Happiness Report hands our Nordic neighbours all top four slots, with Finland reigning supreme. Ireland slots into 14th position, five places above our unhappy Brexiting neighbours. Finland has been climbing the happy ranks in recent years, a performance very much at variance with my own learned prejudices. I understood it to be rather a dour place, starved of sunlight, with a non-stop backing track of Sibelius. I would read of elevated levels of depression and youth suicide. I always understood that male Finns drove way too fast on the roads, perhaps to escape spouses who were a dab hand with high-powered rifles. Well, something is making them happy. and we might learn lessons from this fellow nation of five million folk with a catastrophic history of famine.

Helsinki Trolleys

Money, houses and land aren’t everything in Finland. Because the survey also found that they have the world’s happiest immigrants. No surprise that Finns have zero tolerance of corruption, a police force they trust, and something our politicians reneged on a few years ago, universal healthcare. Nordic populations happily pay higher taxes because they see results. Visiting a GP in this well-subsidised service costs just over a tenner. Visiting a hospital to see a consultant in outpatients will set you back about €30. There aren’t 600 patients waiting on trolleys for hospital admission in Helsinki, Tampere and Turku. Nor are there 500,000 people waiting for outpatient appointments. The Euro health consumer index has Finland in first place for value-for-money healthcare. With our HSE out hunting for a new director general to start work this summer, I vote for flying in a few Finns.

Warning Sign

Eating Disorder Awareness Week has come and gone, but I made a little note to write about an interesting survey conducted in the field. Two thousand people were surveyed, and more than one-third of them didn’t know any signs of eating disorders they could look out for among friends or family. Weight loss and thinness are, perhaps, the more obvious ones. But excessive exercise, concealing food, hair loss, constipation, loss of periods, tiredness and mood changes are other signs to be aware of.

Morgue Error

The Journal of the Royal

Society of Medicine has published an important paper that needs to be studied carefully in mortuaries. It looks at the hidden world of morgue error, and examined 132 incidents in English post-mortem facilities over a recent decade. Twenty-five bodies were released to an undertaker by mistake, and in nine cases, the wrong body was buried or cremated by the receiving family. There were over 50 incidents examined where the storage of the body gave rise to problems. In some cases, bodies were too large to fit into standard-sized mortuary fridges. There were also cases of refrigerator malfunction, including a number of cases where bodies were stored at too high a temperature, so that viewing by relatives was not possible. The study’s author, a well-known paediatric surgeon, thankfully says that serious incidents are uncommon. But he goes on to warn those who manage mortuary services of the significant risks inherent in these services, and of how grieving families can be devastated when services fall short.

America’s Doctor

I like the way the United States adopts doctors for the benefit of the nation. The Surgeon General is the most widely known, but the recent death of 99 year-old Dr T Berry Brazelton reminded us that for many years he was regarded simply as America’s Paediatrician. Inheriting the unofficial title from Dr Benjamin Spock, Brazelton set about placing the newborn baby at the centre of the universe. He kicked out against rigid thinking and rigid books on baby health, asserting that child development doesn’t have to occur in an unbroken straight line. Like the best spouses of proselytising doctors, his wife didn’t always agree with his theories, and could spurn his advice. Dr Brazelton once said that they argued for 66 years, but he always let her win. May this wisest of wise doctors rest in deserved peace.