The Doctors’ Dilemma
by Ian Hamilton
Doctor’s don’t have dilemmas. Having been educated at public expense they screw the public for £900 a night working after hours in A & E. It’s called ‘value for money’ or Thatcherism or anything else you want. Medical practice, like legal practice is now based on greed and not on any daft ideas of public service. It’s every person’s right to maximise their income. Thus the doctor who closes the door in your face at 5pm can easily be seen in A & E an hour later. That’s provided you can get through the arbitrary selection process on NHS 24. The best way is to say you have acute chest pains and then they’ll send an ambulance for you five hours later.
All this might be a worry if anyone ever needed a doctor in a hurry, but you don’t. Dying is a slow process and seldom needs an urgent response. If it’s urgent then it’s the ambulance service we should be spending money on not the doctors. Did you ever see anyone on the point of death in a doctor’s surgery? No! Of course you didn’t, and it would be a damned bad advertisement for their practice if you did. People on the point of death are the only ones that get home visits as no doctor in his or her senses wants anyone dieing anywhere near their surgeries. It’s bad for business. I will tell you something about this business.
It’s all a fake. Doctors don’t save lives. They are bad for you. This has been proven statistically. When doctors go on strike the death rate falls. During the doctors’ pay strike in Harold Wilson’s second spell of government in the 1970s the death rate went down. Check for yourselves. The statistics are there. I would like to know if the death rate has fallen where the doctors work a five day nine to five service, close on public holidays, and take a ‘training day’ any time they feel like a long lie and a cup of tea in bed at ten o’clock of a morning. I asked an MSP to put down a parliamentary question to see if there’s a statistical connection between a long life and short doctors’ hours but he chickened out. He was afraid to annoy his doctor with whom he had an appointment three weeks the following Tuesday, weather permitting.
What then are doctors for? Gey little, is the answer. They are there to monitor the use of dangerous drugs, a function that could just as well be done by pharmacists. You don’t need a stethoscope to prescribe the pill to a teenage girl. All you need is common sense. I know about these things. I’m a retired lawyer and we professionals of every type have held licence to screw the laity so that everyone takes it for granted that we’re necessary. We aren’t. If you are about to go ‘ArgAAAAAAHHHH,’ clutch your chest and drop down like a hammer on a concrete floor an ambulance man might save you but a doctor won’t. They’re not trained in hands on medicine.
Ach! I’ll make a concession. If they confine themselves to diagnostics and pill-peddling then they have their uses. Pharmaceuticals have come a long way since the three witches danced round a pot on Magus Moor. Pharmaceuticals can actually cure things. Maybe doctors, more trained in diagnostics than pharmacists, can decide which is the better drug. Maybe! But doctoring is now conducted over the telephone. I wonder why it needs a doctor and not the old fashioned ‘chemist’ himself, herself or itself.
But really! As an ex-professional I give you this advice. If there’s something funny with your body get yourself down to the surgery right away. Do I contradict myself? No I don’t. Because once you’ve got yourself down to the surgery if your doctor’s any use at all you’ll be sent to a specialist right away. Or, if you’re really ill you’ll be sent home damn quick to die.
Och! This is where I came in. Honest doctor I haven’t meant a word of this. You’re far more useful than we lawyers ever were. And when can I have an appointment for these chest pains? Four weeks next Monday? Thank you doctor.
ArgAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
January 16th, 2008 at 3:46 am
This merits serious consideration.
I’m away to lie down with the nurse.