Читать книгу The Complete Confessions of a GP - Benjamin Daniels - Страница 43

Would you think it was strange if your GP gave you a hug? Probably yes if you were just asking him to look at your athlete’s foot. What about if you were upset and needed some human contact?

One of the GPs near me has been suspended for the last two years for allegedly hugging his patients. He worked single-handedly for many years with no apparent problems, but two years ago, shortly after firing his receptionist, she reported him to the General Medical Council for having had ‘inappropriate contact’ with patients. A letter was sent to all his past and present patients and one or two of them then confessed that they felt he had been slightly inappropriately tactile with them over the years. Interestingly, nobody actually complained, but he was suspended and is still awaiting the conclusion of an investigation. He is an older GP, originally from Italy, and he claims that he was simply comforting upset patients. I’ve never met the doctor involved but I’ve met some of his ex-patients and they explained to me that they always assumed he was ‘just a bit Italian’ and was simply less reserved than us Brits. I have no idea if there is any truth behind the allegations, but it has made me very conscious of how I am with my patients.

I’m not sure whether there was more than meets the eye with regard to the Italian doctor, but I do think that cultural differences concerning human contact are important. I saw a very cute little three-year-old Italian girl once. She was very snotty and full of cold but basically fine. After reassuring the mum, she said to the little girl: ‘Give the nice doctor a kiss for looking after you so nicely.’ I was quite surprised. It just isn’t something we do here. I also wasn’t too pleased to receive a snotty kiss from a virus-ridden three-year-old.

There also seem to be cultural differences between nationalities with regard to women being examined by male doctors. The general rule for women appears to be that they tend to feel awkward about being intimately examined by a young male doctor until they have had a baby. It would seem that the experience of having legs akimbo and ten medical students trying to feel how dilated your cervix is provides an instant cure for ever feeling self-conscious. Eastern European women seem to feel no embarrassment about stripping off in front of the doctor. I saw a young Czech woman who needed her blood pressure taken. She was wearing a thick jumper and I couldn’t roll up her sleeve sufficiently to put the cuff round her upper arm. I asked if she could take off her jumper. She whipped it off without a care in the world and I was rather taken aback to find that she had absolutely nothing on underneath. Not even a bra. The Czech woman herself wasn’t bothered in the slightest and this was supported by her normal blood pressure reading. I dread to think how high mine had gone! Later that surgery a woman from Hong Kong came in with a lump on her back. She was absolutely horrified when I suggested that I would need to have a look and in the end I had to send her to a female GP.

I am often faced with somebody very upset and in floods of tears in front of me. They may be someone I’ve just met or perhaps a patient that I’ve known for some time and have built up a close relationship with. Regardless of this I just wouldn’t give them a hug. One of my GP friends says that he puts a consoling hand on the shoulder of his upset patients. He maintains that it is a comforting form of human contact but not too invasive. I just hand them a box of tissues and try to look sympathetic. I can’t think of anything more awkward than a patient asking me for a hug. Funnily enough, though, if they told me that they had rectal bleeding, I wouldn’t blink an eyelid about sticking my finger up their bum. Just one of those odd quirks of being a doctor, I suppose.