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There are differences between
celebrity IT girls and the average
doctor, but I often wish there were
not. Their privileged lives are so
much easier than that of a junior
doctor. Im serious! On a heavy
night on call we would all love to
change places with either of the
Hilton sisters or even a lesser
known but equally troubled
Hollywood waif.
We sit in the canteen at 3am,
wondering why the paparazzi
arent jostling to get a shot from
beyond the hot food counter. We
wonder why we worked day and
night through medical school, only
to find that we now work for an
organisation where the
sandwiches dont come out of the
food machine, no matter how
hard or how often you kick it.
There is of course an art to kicking
health service food machines (not
covered in any depth at any UK
medical school). These machines
are specifically designed to starve
all doctors to the bone. Keep
them hungry Keep them Keen!
By the time you do coax the sorry
excuse for food out, the machine
has gobbled up all your change
and then.the arrest bleep goes
off. It wouldnt be a surprise if all
doctors ended their on-calls as
skeletons and Sir Bob Geldof
started chivvying up humanitarian
aid for them.
Being on call is about the very
fabric of the hospital conspiring
against you. Its about accidentally
dropping your bleep down the loo
and thanking god that the toilet
was unused. Its about fishing the
hated thing out, drying it under the
hand-dryer and then trying to
present a plausible and less
laughable explanation to the
switchboard operator. Its about
tripping over the urine bag at a
cardiac arrest. Its about looking
over the operating theatre at the
most wonderful dark haired
surgeon you have ever seen, your
eyes meeting, your eyelash
catching on your contact lens. Its
about that contact lens flying
aerodynamically into the patients
open abdomen. (Its true there is a
patient out there, going about his
business with a contact lens in his
stomach either that or the
theatre suction actually worked.)
Its about being exhausted
because millions of patients all
need or want a little piece of your
soul to survive the night. Its about
coming out to find your car has
been clamped because it was
parked one inch over the line. Its
about tolerating full on heating in
the summer and freezing through
the winter. Its about on-call rooms
that are visited by rats.
Now Im not referring to senior
managers when I say rats. I mean
the actual long tailed rodents.
There are of course many sub-types
of such rodent depending on
which side of the vodka bottle
(remember the advert?) you are
looking through. It also depends
on how many hours youve been
on-call for and how good your
imagination is. Its about cutting
pictures of the Chief Executive out
of the hospital magazine, placing
that picture on the back of the
doctors mess door and aiming
spare cannulas at it much like a
dartboard. Whoever gets him right
between the eyes gets a free
dinner from the hospital canteen!
We call this stress relief and it is the
reason we appear serene when it
comes to patient care.
So when on call for long periods,
junior doctors really do have a lot in
common with those party girls from
LA. Its the simple life we live. We
can do thin, we can do catwalks and
we do community service but get
paid for it. The career advice
shouldnt be get three As at A Level
then head off to medical school. It
should be instead get skimpy short
skirts, do your lippy and be a chick.
Head off to the US and be a socialite.
Indeed we must all agree that the
next time one of these celebrity size
zeros is awarded community service
for a minor misdemeanour, it should
be 23 days in a UK hospital, then we
can trade places with her quite
happily, knowing that she will be
made to pay for her crime. The only
downside may be that the GMC
would have something to say about
the videos, sure to appear on the
internet, featuring our celebrity
guests performing PR examinations.
While the cream of British healthcare
goes state-side to show them how
debauchery should be done.
Waggl emag | Heal th & Si ckness | I ssue 1 | February 2008
...contact lens flying
aerodynamically into the
patients open abdomen
Its about tripping
over the urine bag at
a cardiac arrest
The career advice shouldnt
be get three As at A Level then
head off to medical school.
It should be instead get
skimpy short skirts, do
your lippy and be a chick
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