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Fatigue

Yes! Yessssssss! That’s exactly what I need! Happy days! Joy of joys! Where and when do I sign up?

What? You missed it? Well, I suggest you click here immediately and spread the word. Because what GPs need is a ‘completely new alternative contract to encourage them to “transform” into larger units that provide a much wider range of community services and take responsibility for the social care of their patients’. That’s according to, and you may be ahead of me here, the King’s Fund. Yes. That’s ‘need’ in the same way that I ‘need’ the contents of a Kalashnikov emptied into my skull.

Some consolation is to be had from the comments of Chaand Nagpaul, newly elected GP chair. He clearly has his feet planted firmly in the real world because he points out that the many and varied forms of bullying currently being used to pull, push, bruise and batter us are not, in fact, leaving us begging for more torture. Rather, they’re rendering us exhausted. And he’s right. I’m utterly knackered. I’m officially TATT. I thought I was change fatigued but the truth is, I’m just plain fatigued. It’s an effort to get myself home, I drive with one eye shut to give one cerebral hemisphere a rest and I wake the next day as drained as when I went to bed.

And before the diagnostically inclined start labelling me as depressed or CFS’d, I’d suggest you take a peek in the mirror. Because you’re looking crushed and bushed, too – as well you might, because that’s what happens when you’re running up a down escalator which is simply going faster and faster.

So well done GPC chair for hitting the nail on the head. Maybe it’s time for us to stand up and be counted. But if it’s OK with you, I think I’ll just sit here for a bit and have a nap.