Читать книгу The Complete Confessions of a GP - Benjamin Daniels - Страница 35

I see the ten-minute appointment as the patient’s time to use as they so wish. Most patients will fulfil the time in the conventional way with a discussion of a health problem that we then try to collectively resolve. However, any GP will tell you that not all consultations run like this. For example, one of my patients uses the time to tell me about the damp problem in her spare room and another about the affair that she is having with her boss that nobody else knows about. I have one patient who comes into my room, sits down and strokes a toy rabbit in complete silence. Initially, I desperately tried to engage her in conversation, but I have long since given up and now I get on with some paperwork, catch up with my e-mails and check the cricket score on-line. When her ten minutes are up, she gets up and leaves. She doesn’t even need prompting, a perfect patient!

Some people would consider these patients time-wasters but I don’t have any reason to judge a person’s motives for coming to see me. I’m not working in casualty. You don’t have to have an accident or emergency to see me. I’m a GP, which basically makes me the arse end of the NHS. If you turn up on time and leave after ten minutes, I’ll let you talk about anything. In fact, the three above-mentioned patients are among my favourites. My patient with the damp trouble has been updating me on her ongoing problem for months now. She enters my room agitated and upset and then erupts into a monologue on the woes of damp and the turmoil it is causing her. I do very little during the entire consultation other than pretend to look interested and reassure her that it is all going to be just fine. I do gently point out to her when her ten minutes are up or she would stay all afternoon. She is always eternally grateful that I have listened to her and insists that I have made her feel much better. She then happily goes to the desk to book herself in to see me at the same time next week. I also now know the difference between rising damp, penetrating damp, internal damp and condensation!

As for my patient who is having an affair with her boss, I always enjoy her visits. She is a solicitor’s secretary in her early twenties and has been shagging the much older married solicitor for some time. Each visit I get the latest instalment in graphic detail and I am left with an EastEnders-type cliffhanger to keep me in suspense until the following week. During the last visit she told me she was pregnant. The solicitor offered her £5,000 to have an abortion but she really loves him and wants his child. What was she going to do? Ten minutes come to an end – cue EastEnders closing music: dum … dum … dumdumdum … Okay, so yet again not exactly a great use of my expensive training and broad medical knowledge, but I like the intrigue.

I am not completely anal about only spending ten minutes with each patient. Some things take more than ten minutes to sort out and if it is urgent and important then I’ll just have to run late. Last week I saw a young woman who had been sexually assaulted by her uncle. She wanted to talk to someone about it and for some reason she chose me. I listened for nearly an hour because that is how much time she needed. My subsequent patients were annoyed by my lateness, but she was by far the most important patient I had seen all week and the sore ears and snotty kids had to wait.