Copperfield loses his blog - and then his rag with the bean-counters at his PCT
Now this is really embarrassing. I had a blog almost finished – right down to putting a little pixel over all the ‘i's and a raised horizontal bar at the top of all the ‘T's and now I can't remember where I saved it.
It's not on my laptop, my desktop, my PC at work or my iPod. It's not on the virtual hard drives that inhabit the network that links our branch surgery to the main health centre and it's not on any of the six or seven USB sticky things that are lying strewn across the kitchen table.
Naturally, I didn't bother to print out a copy.
It was, rest assured, really good. I remember being particularly proud of a line expressing disappointment that the road signs showing the way to the Franz Kafka Museum in Prague actually pointed in the right direction.
There was a beautifully crafted (though I say it myself) link into the Kafka-esque world of general practice where, for example, entering the code for ‘Medication Reviewed with Patient' into a medical record is not acceptable as evidence that such a review ever took place – at least not by the bean counters at our local PCT HQ.
A free text entry in the ‘Comments' section of the record must accompany the read code. I imagine that the Bottom Inspectors will be looking for a note to confirm that I have discussed the pros and cons, risks and benefits and ins and outs of taking said medication (or inhaling it, rubbing it on or sticking it up the jacksy) with the service user.
I'm going to settle on a one size fits all annotation – ‘Finds Useful. Continue. Keeping Themselves Happily In Shape'.
Copperfield
