God knows how we get through day duty

Copperfield muses on the existence of an almighty ‘Great God of General Practice’ on one of his more trying day duties

I now know whether God exists. By which I mean the Great God of General Practice (GGoGP), who may or may not, each day, protect us from clinical catastrophe, litigation and stress-induced coronary ischaemia.

I know this because of a recent Tuesday. Tuesday is my day duty slot, and I absolutely loathe it. So much so that I habitually pray to the GGoGP the night before – mainly for good weather, because sunshine gives punters something better to do than be ill.

This particular Monday night I was praying harder than usual, because my day duty followed the Easter bank hols, aka a four-day weekend. Carnage at the best of times. And with four colleagues on leave, this wasn’t the best of times.

The morning was actually pleasingly humdrummy. I even had time to caffeinate myself as I ploughed through the pile of letters, lab results and tasks (sidebar: some would say that the existence of tasks in itself disproves the existence of the GGoGP, as what sort of God would do that to us? Discuss).

Things were looking reasonable. Until, that is, mid-afternoon, when it all kicked off. Stuck in an endless consultation about an insoluble ‘mental health’ ‘emergency’, I was interrupted exactly five times:

1. By a call from a paramedic seeing an off-her-legs-little-old-lady and asking me to prescribe antibiotics for a ‘UTI’ and ‘pop round sometime’.
2. By a nurse very concerned that a patient’s blood pressure was ‘high’.
3. By a registrar wanting me to look at a patient whose symptoms ‘don’t make sense’.
4. By an ‘urgent’ prescription request for non-urgent medication.
5. You know those moments when you want to run screaming for the hills and never be seen again? This was that moment. A receptionist knocked on my door to hand me a printed email from a social worker asking me to urgently assess an elderly female who had apparently been ‘walking the streets half naked, shouting at neighbours and randomly knocking on doors’.

I tried to stay calm and rational. I wondered: is this behaviour actually abnormal? This is Essex, after all. That just sounds like a good night out in Basildon. I decided to put it to one side and return to it once I’d cleared the other accumulated day duty crud – by which time it might have disappeared, or I might have woken and realised it was an actual nightmare rather than a metaphorical one.

At 7pm, the email was still there. I had not been dreaming. So, with real dread, I opened the notes of my semi-naked, wandering, shouty patient, calculating that I would get home at, literally, never.

It was then that I had my epiphany. Divine intervention! The Dementia Crisis Team had already visited!! They were in control of the situation!!! There was nothing for me to do!!!! I looked to the heavens and praised the GGoGP – who I now knew  for sure existed.

So, there we have it. There is a Great God of General Practice, and he/she smiled on me that day. I’m now a humble, devout and permanent believer. At least until next Tuesday.

Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex