<<It is ironic, is it not, that someone who chose this country to be his
adopted country is willing to stand at the front of the assault >>
Ah sure 'tis always the case. When us lads from the North went down to
Dublin to study medicine, drinking and sex we were always in the vanguard
of student marches protesting the Dublin government's tight-fisted approach
to 3rd level education. The natives were nowhere to be seen. Worse still,
back then we were mostly on grants and generally lived on them. Why should
we have cared about the rest of the gobshites down there? Because we
valued equalily and fair play and saw the great value of 3rd level ed.
So if we can't make changes with a quick coup then what? Not saying of
course that we are beaten yet but perhaps we need to think about getting
dug in for the long haul. A GP service composed of sane, well-motivated
and well-treated people would be a great asset to this country. How do we
convince Joe Public that we need such?
Fox's correspondence course on influencing the public now follows.
1. Cultivate the local media. They are crying out for good medical copy.
Give it to them and they will love you for life.
2. Refine your message and repeat it every chance you get--to reporters,
HA things, medical students, colleagues, consultants etc etc.
3. Offer your services as lecturer--to local tech and schools, churches
etc etc etc.
4. Miss no opportunity to educate people; how the NHS works, how to handle
minor illnesses, how to make best use of the NHS, any other spiel you can
think of and then offer it to every self-help group you can find.
5. Move on to regional and national press after gaining some experience
locally. They also want to hear from doctors.
6. Consider hunting for a TV doc spot----Richard and Judy had a lot of
trouble finding someone for "This Morning" and eventually asked Chris
Steele because he was their own GP.
7. Buy two papers daily (one quality, one not) and watch their health
coverage. Take every opportunity to inform them.
8. And finally, we now have a glorious chance to tell the world just how
thick Joe Public really is with this latest antibiotic scare. A scare
which has actually been with us for years, it just happens to make news
now. I caught one doctor on the lunchtime news being terribly reasonable
about the problem of persuading patients to leave the surgery without an
antibiotic. Someone needs to do the full monty on this one-----we give out
more antibiotics than we should because bloody patients have the power to
make our lives miserable if we don't. They are pumped up by Tory
charters, they don't trust us because of media propaganda, they want to
exert control over us, they can make totally unreasonable and malicious
complaints about and cause us no end of grief dealing with those and we
have brain-dead academics telling us that we should actually treat some
colds with antibiotics!!!
We give out antibiotics because there are times when we have to if we want
to get on with the job. Who has the time to spend two hours with Mr and Mrs
Ghastly explaining the difference between bacteria and viruses about 17
times?
As for sore throats, well I have given up on that since recent papers
have been penned by people who don't seem able to do a basic literature
search.
One man's scare is another man's opportunity. Seize it!!!
Declan
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