What would Noel Coward say on being a doctor?

The trouble with going on holiday is that when you get back you need another one to recover from the backlog! Actually that is unfair to the HCSA team who provided a seamless service whilst I was away. On reflection, the more depressing aspect of getting back is to find that nothing has changed: the same old problems remain. 

Consultants facing a pay freeze (or a cut in real terms), and Machiavellian management styles from aggressive trust regimes, would perhaps have some empathy with Colin Tucker brought in to turnaround the Social Services Department in Birmingham. In an honest appraisal of what had gone wrong in social services he said on Radio 4’s Today Programme that he would not want one of his children to become a social worker in today’s climate.

Noel Coward had flair with words and music, as the ditty ”Don’t put your daughter on the stage Mrs Worthington” demonstrated. But I wonder what advice he would have given to her if she decided that her daughter should become a hospital doctor instead? Something like this perhaps:

Don’t put your daughter into medicine, Mrs Worthington,

Don’t put your daughter into medicine,

The profession is undervalued

And a consultant’s life is tough;

I admit the fact she’s bright

And yearns to treat patients right

But she will for ever be a trainee at night.

She has nice hands, to give the wretched girl her due,

Quite dexterous from a surgical point of view

But in years of validation

And control beyond imagination

They will soon become hard

With no time for preparation,  

As management find ways of

Reducing SPA’s by two.

If targets are her thing

And performance the “be and all”

Then who knows she may walk tall.

But if she wants a life of fun

When her life has just begun

Do you want her reduced to tears

As the pressures take their years?

Then I repeat

Mrs Worthington,

Sweet Mrs Worthington,

Don’t put your daughter into medicine!

Now Mr Coward - what about Mrs Worthington wanting her daughter to be a lawyer or accountant?  

Tags: Management