Confessions of a GP

In a wave of sad nostalgia I wondered what that naïve 18-year-old me would think about what he had become. Would I have even bothered to have gone on to study medicine if I could have foreseen how so much of that initial hope and optimism would drain away. Not even out of my twenties yet, I began to wonder if being a doctor was anything close to the career I thought it was going to be. As I returned the drunk homeless man on to the street, I offered him an appointment to come back and see me the following morning when he was sober, explaining about organising an alcohol detox. ‘I’ll be there, Doc,’ he told me as he shoved the appointment card into his pocket. We both knew that he’d miss that appointment, but at least we were mutually left with a faint glimmer of hope for something better.

Please don’t imagine that this book is about me looking for sympathy or commiserations about my broken dreams, or assume that I have lost my empathy and respect for the people who expectantly seek my help or advice. I guess it’s just that the often grim reality of practising inner city medicine is not quite what I had expected it to be. I no longer dream of miracle cures and magic bullets and I have definitely given up waiting to dramatically reinflate that collapsed lung. Instead, I acknowledge that my role is to listen and share the pains, concerns and sufferings of the people who sit before me. I offer the odd nugget of good advice and provide some support at times of need. Perhaps just occasionally I even make a small difference in someone’s life. The intention of this book is simply to give an honest but light-hearted insight into some of the joys, frustrations and absurdities of being an inner city NHS GP today. I hope you enjoy it.

I have only been a GP for three years but I do genuinely love the job. I like the variety and getting to know my patients. I find it challenging and rewarding. Sometimes I even make a diagnosis and cure someone! I’m currently working as a locum which means that I work in different GP surgeries in different parts of the country, covering other GPs when they are away. I also still do some shifts as an A&E doctor from time to time. Some of my posts have just been for one day, others have been for over a year and I get to see the good, bad and ugly side of general practice, patients and the NHS. I love my job and think that it is one of the most interesting out there. I hope that after reading this book you might agree with me, or if not at least realise that it isnt just about seeing coughs and colds.

Mrs Peacock

Like parents, doctors are not supposed to have favourites but I have to admit to being rather fond of Mrs Peacock. She is well into her eighties and her memory has been deteriorating over the last few years. Most weeks she develops a medical problem and calls up the surgery requesting me to visit. When I arrive, the medical problem has been resolved or at least forgotten and I end up changing the fuse on the washing machine or helping her to find her address book, which we eventually locate in the fridge. As I tuck into a milky cup of tea and a stale coconut macaroon, I reflect that my medical skills probably aren’t being put to best use. I imagine the grumbling taxpayer wouldn’t be too pleased to know that having forked out over £250,000 to put me through my medical school training, they are now paying my high GP wages in order for me to ineptly try to recall which coloured wire is earth in Mrs Peacock’s ageing plug.

Mrs Peacock needs a bit of social support much more than she needs a doctor so when I return to the surgery I spend 30 minutes trying to get through to social services on the phone. When I finally get through, I am told that because of her dementia, Mrs Peacock needs a psychiatric assessment before they can offer any social assistance. The psychiatrist is off sick with depression and the waiting list to see the stand-in psychiatrist is three months. I’m also reminded that Mrs Peacock will need to have had a long list of expensive tests to exclude a medical cause for her memory loss. Three months and many normal test results later, Mrs Peacock forgot to go to her appointment and had to return to the back of the queue.

Through no fault of her own, Mrs Peacock has cost the NHS a small fortune. Her heart scan, blood tests and hospital appointments all cost money and we GPs don’t come cheap, either. Mrs Peacock does have mild dementia but more importantly she is lonely. She needs someone to pop in for a cup of tea from time to time and remind her to feed her long-suffering cat. It would appear that this service is not on offer, so, in the meantime, I’ll continue to visit from time to time. When the coconut macaroons become so inedible that even the hungry cat won’t eat them, I’ll think again about trying to get Mrs Peacock some more help.

Tom Jones