Posts Tagged ‘Humour’

How Hospitaldr could learn a thing or two from the Daily Mail

By Mike Broad - 1st September 2010 10:28 am

Hospitaldr.co.uk, like all ‘publications’, has an editorial strategy. In a nutshell, it’s to provide hospital doctors with interesting, timely and relevant information. And, in the words of Robbie Williams, we also seek to entertain you…which brings me neatly to the Daily Mail’s editorial strategy.

Ok, ok, it might not actually be up on the wall in Paul Dacre’s office, but once you read the Victoria Line all the paper’s animosity towards the medical and social work professions falls into place.

I’m wondering whether I should adapt it for my lowly site (after all, it’s led to Dacre reportedly earning £1.65m a year). I spent several years of my 20s trying to make progress on the Northern Line during rush hour, with little success. On my map, I’d definitely replace Angel, Old Street and Bank with Revalidation, the NHS IT Programme and GP commissioning…

Hey don’t worry everyone fat, baldy GP man is here

By Jerry Nelson - 9th August 2010 10:10 pm

Arsington Arse. As you will remember, the penny-pinching idiots in our trust eschewed the opportunity to save some money on stupid things that don’t matter, like General Medicine, and instead wielded their axe at the very heart of patient care by making me share an office with lefty-dweeb, compost smelling, beardy, sandal wearing Liberal Democretin knob mechanic Johnson.

I have to spend all day listening to his whiny phone calls, where he basically gets told what to do by his juniors or his wife or his ‘Nurse Practitioners’ whatever they are. And now he reckons it’s acceptable to play his crappy music on his stupid Linux PC, and cover the walls in low-quality artwork done by his obviously-retarded ginger children.

And if that were not enough, he leaves his idiot lefty newspapers lying around, so I am forced to notice THIS.

The bolg starts badly:

“Don’t take offence if we lecture you on how to stay alive and healthy…”

None taken. Don’t take offence if I tell you to go fuck yourself. But then the real killer blow:

“…says Britain’s Leading GP”

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. Why don’t we just ask Britain’s most intelligent springer spaniel? What follows is a barely coherent version of the tedious lecture that everyone gets whenever they visit the GP, whether it’s because of piles or a gunshot wound to the head. All the usual public health spiel: smoking, drinking, junk food and even sunbeds.

“I admire Girls Aloud’s Nicola Roberts and her campaign against sunbeds.”

Yeah, I bet you do, you perv. Here’s some public health advice, too much ‘admiring’ and you’ll go blind. It’s almost as though GP’s see themselves as somehow, I dunno, relevant. Certainly, Mr Top GP wants us to think they are:

“The roles for GPs are increasing. Every consultation is an opportunity to detect early-warning signs that prevent illness and disease.”

Gosh, what a fascinating life you must lead. But don’t worry everyone:

“GPs are not spoilsports. We genuinely want people to be able to live healthy, fulfilling and productive lives.”

But everyone gets ill all the time! I bet you’re all in tears every day of your 3-days-a-week working lives.

“Every day we are confronted with the harm caused by smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and obesity.”

You and me both. I have to look at Dan The Fat Gasman all day.

“I’m not suggesting that the GP profession can singlehandedly turn the situation around…”

Oh no! Who will save us now, O wise baldy GP man who doesn’t look that svelte himself..?

“…but we are certainly ready to play our part.”

For 200 grand a year. Phew!

“So please don’t take offence if we tell you to lose weight or stop smoking or drinking. You need to face facts and take responsibility. Support is out there and it could save your life - and save the NHS a fortune.”

Hmmm. I have a much better idea on THIS.

Anyway, that’s all from me for this week. My ‘office buddy’ has just arrived wanting to know why the framed picture of the hairy munter he calls Mrs Johnson has been knocked over and broken, and he doesn’t seem to think the words “new pitching wedge” are a satisfactory explanation.

Liverpool Women’s Trust invests in male performance

By Mike Broad - 6th August 2010 1:49 pm

Oh dear, a smutty theme appears to be developing in this column.

First hospitals start renting out rooms for the filming of, ahem, adult entertainment.

Then they go and spend loads of money on building a room dedicated to enhancing the production of, ahem, sperm samples.

The Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust has spent £7,500 on developing a room which aids the process and includes a cool £500 on porn films.

Needless to say it has The Sun, in all its hypocrisy, extremely agitated.

Maybe the hospital should have taken a leaf out of the Royal Cornwall’s (less smutty) book, which spends just £5 a year on a couple of gentlemen’s magazines.

Like a bull in a china shop (or the renal unit)

By Mike Broad - 26th July 2010 3:55 pm

You’d have thought there was enough ‘bull’ being spoken in the NHS at the moment, particularly during power point presentations with headings like ‘Making efficiencies’ and ‘New commissioning structures’.

But that’s nothing compared to Kent and Canterbury Hospital.

OSCE’s an anagram for ‘complete waste of time’

By Jerry Nelson - 3:38 pm

What a load of arse. Just got roped in to helping with the exams for the bloody students, a group of ladies and gentlemen with whom I share a deep and mutual respect. This, of course, is one of the 11 million things that used to be fun but now is just a massive pain since somebody decided to make it all ‘better’.

Once upon a time, we would drag a few patients from the wards, who incidentally, would be deeply honoured to help with the exams for the young doctors. Then we’d get the students in one by one, bully and humiliate them and generally dance around poking them with sticks. If they were good at rugby or wearing a short skirt they’d probably pass. And this is the time-honoured technique that over the years has produced outstanding doctors such as myself.

Now of course it’s all changed. Some smartarse with nothing better to do decided they should be examined using something called an ‘OSCE’, where they go through various ’stations’, each devoted to a particular topic. And it’s totally boring because all the questions are set, and the whole thing is timed precisely and they all move around every five minutes, and after half an hour of this you want to kill yourself.

So anyway, I get given the ‘abdominal examination’ station, and I walk into the cubicle and find not a patient, but an arsing actor called Rupert! Can you believe it? Some ponsed-up out-of-work luvvie who’s sitting in the lotus position ‘preparing for his role’. I read through the questions I’m supposed to ask, which are all mind-bendingly easy and stupid, so I changed a few to make it more interesting. And the first few students come through and it all seems fine but then all hell breaks loose, and the ‘Ac-Tor’ flounces out in a huff and says he’s quitting.

And I’m like: how can the students properly examine an abdomen if I don’t make them perform a rectal examination?

Anyway, I end up getting relegated to the station that no-one else wants to do: basic life support, where the students have to resuscitate this dummy that collapsed on the floor in a car park or something. It’s utterly crap and boring. It’s so boring that after a while I have to think up little games to keep myself awake. First I just failed every third candidate. Then I decided to fail the ones who did it really well and give the dangerous no-hopers a distinction.

But, it’s funny - in the end I actually learnt something. Specifically, I learnt that watching an attractive young woman in a tight T-shirt straddling a dummy and doing CPR, is extremely enjoyable. So I got her to do a couple more cycles, you know just to make sure. I even filmed it on my mobile for later reference…

Must have lost track of time, because the next thing I know the Headmaster comes barging in saying I’ve been at it for half-an-hour and there are six students backed up waiting and the whole thing’s a complete shambles.

Yeah, well. See? OSCE’s. Stupid idea.

The lunatics are being invited to take over the asylum

By Jerry Nelson - 19th July 2010 5:55 pm

Arse Arsington Arsevich Von Arsingstein! They’re going to give all the NHS budgets to who? [Cough, splutter...] THE ARSING GPs??

Tell me something. Do they put airlines under the budgetary control of baggage handlers? No.

Who runs Tesco? The trolley collectors? No.

Who decides how the money is spent at BP? The minimum-wage teenage muppet who takes half-an-hour to turn your pump on at the gas station? No - that’s why its share price is so secure.

So why in the name of arse would you give the purse strings of our great and noble NHS to a bunch of glorified know-nothing social workers?

I’ve got a MUCH better idea. Why don’t they give the budget to me? I’d save millions! We replace all the GPs with automated sicknote dispensers, and use the estimated hundred bzillion pounds it would save not paying their absurd salaries to pay for things that really benefit our patients, like clinical excellence awards and a decent staff car park.

Then I’d sack all the useless people - diversity co-ordinators, community outreach liaison advisers, smoking cessation nurses, general physicians. Then I’d employ all the now-unemployed GPs as non-training-grade House Officers (salary: minimum wage plus london weighting, half day on Sunday)

Oh, and in reference to Bob Bury’s question last week, I know exactly how much radiology to purchase - lots and lots. Except it will all come from my mate Sundeep’s new Middle Bit of Uttar Pradesh Most Efficient Radiology Service, where hundreds of highly trained radiologists (salary: minimum wage minus Indian Weighting, half day on 29 Feb) work round the clock to report on our images.

If only Dan the Fat Gasman was so easy to replace…

Straight questions take Lansley to the brink

By Mike Broad - 16th July 2010 4:30 pm

Just when everyone is getting carried away that the white paper Liberating the Nash is taking us in a fresh and dynamic direction its author - the health secretary - went and cracked under some tough questioning from a fictional character.

Back to the drawing board then…

Debbie does Kensington and Chelsea after Dallas

By Mike Broad - 12th July 2010 1:04 pm

Let’s hope our cash strapped trusts don’t resort to some of the more desperate measures deployed in the past to raise a few quid.

Tory MP Penny Mordaunt revealed, during a debate in the House of Commons on transparent accounting, that when she was the director of Kensington and Chelsea Council one the local hospitals hired out a closed - but fully equipped ward - as a film set.

What type of film did they shoot? Well, let’s just say the ‘nurses’ were wearing latex uniforms, the ‘doctors’ had names like Butch and the cameraman focused on the many ‘invasive procedures’.

Mordaunt explained “Although I cannot claim to have seen the final picture - as I understand, these things are no longer claimable on parliamentary expenses - it was a big-budget affair and generated substantial income for the hospital.

“But apart from cheering up a few of the in-patients, it cannot be said to be contributing to the objectives of the primary care trust.”

Oh I don’t know, there are plenty of staff who are about to be shafted by their trusts…

Can’t believe the feedback on the quality of my teaching

By Jerry Nelson - 28th June 2010 8:35 am

Bloody arsing students. Is it me, or are they all useless whingeing crybabies who reckon they need to be spoonfed everything on a plate?

Teaching students used to be fun. They’d be so keen to suck up to you that you could tell them any old crap and they’d be grateful, then they’d all get squiffy at the firm party and the pretty ones would sit on your knee. You could humiliate them on ward rounds, cancel teaching sessions, leave them to finish the clinic, and they’d love you for it.

But as with so much of the world, it’s all become completely arse about face. Can you believe that the Middle Bit of England Medical School now routinely asks them for feedback? I mean, asks THEM!!? What the arsing hell is that all about? As if anyone gives a flying badger’s rectum what they think about anything, let alone the ‘quality of their teaching’.

Here’s a few examples of ‘feedback’:

“Mr Nelson frequently failed to turn up for appointed tutorials and was frequently rude to patients on ward rounds.”

“At first I thought Mr Nelson was trying hard to memorise my name badge, but I soon realised he was just staring at my chest.”

“The only thing Mr Nelson said to me during my entire eight-week attachment was that radiologists are all gay. My father is a radiologist.”

And I’m like: where are they getting this nonsense from?

Any students reading this? Right - here’s the deal. I supply the gems of wisdom honed through years of experience at the very highest level in the greatest profession on God’s earth, and you supply the gratitude. That’s it. Class dismissed!

Fortysomethings are swinging more than their golf clubs

By Mike Broad - 24th June 2010 4:20 pm

I’m nearly 40 and struggling to come to terms with it.

My hair has all but disappeared and my knees ache, particularly when I get up in the morning. It’s all starting to feel a bit like a slippy slope.

But, if Dutch research is anything to go by, being in your 40s and 50s can be a decidedly frisky experience. One in nine patients attending the Dutch STD clinics involved in the study proved to swingers with an average age of 43.

While the combined rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea were just under 5% in female prostitutes, they were over 10% among older swingers.

Apparently it’s hard to target the group with health services, unlike say gay men, because it’s a hidden - though clearly growing - culture.

And there was I thinking I’d just be playing a bit more golf…