I hate airports, they are the quintessential definition of a necessary evil if you ask me. If there was any other practical way of travelling overseas I would take it. They seem to have perfected the art of blending exploitation, patronisation and belittlement into a truly awful sickly broth.
The whole experience is a rollercoaster ride between being treated like a new inmate in prison, ripped-off in shops that inflate their high street prices then claim the opposite and bleated at by irritating security announcements that seem to assume we all have the IQ of a lobotimized lab rat.
Ring any bells?
Thanks to Shipman and Janet Smith, you now can’t say ‘GP’ and ‘diamorphine’ in the same sentence without people assuming you’ve just set up the first UK branch of Dignitas. Everyone and their dog seems to want to squeeze more money out of us; defence organisations, GMC, royal colleges, CQC, appraisal, the pensions agency, the tax man, the list just goes on.
Then there are the mandatory courses. Where to begin?
Have you done adult safeguarding yet? I just finished this and was left wondering exactly who it was pitched at:
‘John has a bruise on his face’ is this abuse A: physical B: sexual C: emotional
‘Jane has a sore vagina’ is this abuse A: physical B: sexual C: emotional
Who is their intended audience? Obviously the lowest common denominator, but if that is the pinnacle of the intellectual ability of the majority of the NHS workforce then God help us.
In ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ O’Brien invites Winston Smith to imagine the future as a boot stamping on a human face forever.
If I were imagining the future for general practice it would be some awful chimera with the venom spitting head of Jeremy Hunt, bloated body of the private sector and the multiple arms of a Hindu goddess squeezing the life blood out of us while at the same time emptying our wallets.
Dr David Turner is a GP in west London
