MEDICAL MATTERS:Even the toughest medic fears the unexpected off-duty emergency call, writes PAT HARROLD.
‘IS THERE a doctor in the . . . ?”
It doesn’t matter how you finish the sentence. In the house, the plane, the ship?
It is an expression that will chill the blood of the toughest medic. They poise, the fork halfway to the mouth, the eyes as wide as saucers.
This is the call that they have dreaded all their medical careers. This is the unexpected here and now, and there is nowhere to hide.
All your life as a doctor you have been in some sort of comfort zone. You have your hospital, your office, your speciality. Nurses back you up, secretaries organise you and juniors buoy up your inadequacies. But now, you are summoned to the uncharted, you are shaken and stirred, for your presence is required for the unexplained emergency.
Not only are you called on to save the day but, to make matters worse, you usually have an audience. You are being asked to perform, alone and unrehearsed, in front of a goggle-eyed crowd.
Some rise manfully to the occasion. They assess the situation in a glance, improvise a life-saving tool from a rubber tube and a lemonade bottle, and get their face on the news. They modestly proclaim to the world “I only did what any doctor would have done.”
Yeah, right.
Even if you decide to risk the victim’s life and your own self-esteem and tentatively volunteer your services, there is a good chance that the person who asked for a doctor will insultingly scan you from head to toe and proclaim “You don’t look like a doctor.”
It is useless to protest that, in most cases, there is actually no emergency at all, that with a little common sense you can leave the situation to the paramedics who do this sort of thing regularly, and that as a retired microbiologist or psychiatrist-in training you will probably do more harm than good.
The public will of course have none of this. They expect you to wade in and throw your weight about, adding fresh drama to an already enthralling situation.
It is a safe bet that if you pass a car accident on the road, among the rubberneckers slowing down for a look will be a fair few medics trying to ascertain that nobody is injured while silently praying that nobody recognises them.
I came upon a crash once and duly stopped for a look. I was asking the driver of the car how he felt when I received a vicious shove in the back which sent me sprawling on the grass verge.
A large cross woman proceeded to pull the driver from the car by the shirt collar, swing him on the grass beside me and force him onto his back. When I asked her what she was doing I was told to shut up – she worked in a nursing home.
When I gently informed her that I was a doctor she looked even crosser. “You don’t look like a doctor to me,” she snapped.
But what should a doctor look like?
Should I go about in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses just in case I am called upon to perform an emergency (or impersonate de Valera, whichever comes first)?
This came home to me forcibly on another occasion when I was on a car ferry. The dreaded call came through – “Is there a doctor on the boat?”
I approached the desk and announced that I was a doctor. Straight away a small crowd which had gathered around the desk turned and ran like rats from a fire. They were all doctors.
I should mention that at the time I was clad from head to toe in black leather (this was in my biking days). Still, I was brought without question to a small room which held a mildly sea-sick woman, a magnificent collection of drugs, including most known opiates, and a log book. Then I was promptly abandoned.
I gave the seasick lady a shot of anti-emetic and whiled away the time until she recovered reading the doctors’ log book. It made fascinating reading.
Nobody had written “Dear God this is an awful place!” but it was close. There had been epic fights, helicopter rescues, drunken misadventures, psychiatric crises, all handled by passing doctors in this tiny sick bay, without thanks or help.
I still remember the account of the injuries inflicted when a soccer team and a rugby team fell out. You had to feel for the poor doctor in the middle of that one.
When the lady felt better I went to the duty free, where there was just enough time to stock up on the little presents that went down so well in the Doctor’s Res.
It was long before Chip and Pin so I produced a cheque book. After much conferring and scrutiny of my name the cheque was refused.
Of course I was told “You don’t look like a doctor.” I should have sent them a cheque in guineas for my services.
Maybe then I would have looked like a doctor.
Pat Harrold is a GP practising in Co Tipperary