Doctors are a drain on society: Cambridge Orthopaedic Writing Prize

By Richard Villar

It is a natural assumption that authors who have published numerous scientific papers have also acquired mastery of the written word. Yet sadly this is not always the case. Talk to many journal editors and they will say that a number of the submissions they receive fail because an interesting finding has simply been presented in a poor way.



The Cambridge Orthopaedic Writing Prize was created to allow freedom of written expression and to encourage trainees, authors, writers – call them what you will – to have fun, to play with their language and, at the same time, to compete. The end game, of course, is for the quality of scientific submissions to improve; for entrants to realise that you can influence a reviewer’s judgment simply by improving the language and presentation of submitted research. There are no prizes for hopeless complexity. How can one expect a reviewer to focus on a paper that is badly written? Not a hope. Reviewers are human, too.



For the 2013 prize, the judges were bowled over with the professionalism and content of the submissions. Each one, in their view, was utterly brilliant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookPartnership.com
• Release date: Jul 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783014552

Book preview

enough?

Winner

Doctors are a drain on society. Perhaps we are. The social hub of society is ‘The Dinner Party’ and I am certainly a drain at dinner parties. The smart, yet casual, social haunt of anyone with a degree and a job that earns them over 20k. Whilst everyone discusses the latest office gossip and chortles about business meetings that ‘ended with Jerry stood on the table serenading the Princess of Sweden!’ I am there, pale from living a nearly nocturnal life on nights and probably riddled with scurvy having given up all food except for toast from the mess.

‘So how is your job as a DOCTOR?’ ‘Oh perfect I’ve been on-call so managed to hold a wee in for 12 hours and walked around for 4 hours today with an old ladies blood on my face thanks to an overzealous ortho registrar with a saw and an intracapsular NOF! You would think someone would have told me...’ I had them at ‘blood’ and lost them at ‘ortho registrar’. Smug James who works in ‘The City’ has suddenly lost his appetite for the rare steak we are all enjoying and my non-medic friends once again push food round their plates and wonder when I’m next on-call.

We certainly are a drain on ink at the tabloid printers. Tabloid newspapers appear to be the fodder of society. What society grazes on whilst utilising the public transport system. When they have finally run out of stories about Princess Diana and have completed 50 shades of xenophobia we often are allowed our 15 minutes of fame. ‘Doctors More Hated Than Bankers’... apparently. I’m certain I would take this national disgust much better from the padded leather seats of my private jet after back to back meetings in Deutsche Bank’s pools of gold.

Everyone in society also loves a good ‘Doctor Missed My Unpronounceable Eponymous Syndrome’ tale; what failures we are. Between magazines showing hideous scars from botched boob jobs in Bradford to demonic doctors poisoning their lovers we make flashy and disgraceful headlines. Our mumbling faux empathy and fatigued demeanour is no match for the newspapers Tuesday Medical Section or indeed Dr. Google. Dr. Google (although often telling porky pies) gives free, instant, unapologetic answers and never botches a boob job. He certainly is not a drain on society; unlike us.

When society isn’t feeding off news and discussing it over dinner tables they are happily procreating in wholesome homes. Whether in straight marriages or gay partnerships our society is seemingly built upon the notion that we need to be happily cohabiting with a binding legal contract for life; and with child (or many) to be complete. I’m not. In fact doctors are terrors for the dreaded ‘D word’... divorce. I can close my eyes in a busy hospital canteen and decipher immediately which tables are hosting doctors, indeed which species of doctor. ‘We can’t find a weekend in our rotas for the next 8 months where we are both free to get married!’ certainly the medical registrar, ‘my ex-wife is taking our children to Lake Como this summer’ Surgical Consultant, ‘my second ex-wife is taking our children to Lake Como this summer’ Orthopaedic Consultant.

Our hours, exams and terrible dinner party chat make us our own home wreckers. We are contributing to broken Britain through divorce and absent parenting. Our children will act up in class because they are lacking role models, we are never home and when we are we are tired. ‘Hello, this is the scrub sister can I take a message the doctor is scrubbed? Yes. I will tell her. Sorry to interrupt, your son Damian has bitten another child in Primary 4 and then proceeded to eat all the purple crayons in a fit of rage. The school would like you to come in please and take him home.’ ‘Oh bugger, can I get a 4-0 vicryl please and can you call them back please and ask them to call the nanny.’

I have neglected to mention how we drain the foundation of society, the glue holding us all together in the colony and no, it’s not love or a beautiful desire to work symbiotically with one another (you only need to get on the Tube in rush hour to thank God it doesn’t rely on this). It is money. That piece of paper with the queen’s face stamped on is what holds the whole show together. We drain that. Large amounts of societies cement; precious money that could be spent on new roads and more Boris Bikes. I won’t bore with figures and graphs but it costs a small fortune to turn spotty school nerds into brave life savers (or rheumatologists). Once we are trained we need to work somewhere and society pays out even more money for that as well. The NHS is a black hole guzzling society’s cash; it is the Enron of government institutions. It is a sinking ship but we refuse to jump off, we are still playing Rachmaninov in the water logged dining room and rearranging deck chairs. We keep the vortex open and allow the money to fall in.

We really do drain society from a variety of angles. Sometimes, however, I feel that we may redeem ourselves slightly when the tables are turned and society is trying to drain itself. We are there when society is metaphorically circling the drain. Sometimes we act as plugs for society, not just drains. Plugging arteries when society decides to slam their car into a wall at 75 mph. Plugging tears when we give back hope by offering to remove tumours .Plugging fractured hips with cement and prosthesis just so society can walk again. Plugging holes in hearts so younger members of society can grow up, live and dream. Perhaps we are drains on society in general, but for a few hours a day we get to be plugs and for me that’s enough to justify my draining life as a doctor to society.

Runner-up

The rain fell in sheets on the platform as the train inched its way into Slough station. Sarah, bundled up against the piercing cold wind dashed for the cover of the station. Her head down and hands thrust deep in her pockets, she began the cold, damp walk to the computer production plant.

Chris, in the dry, overheated cab at the front of the train, checked the computer monitors; good charge on the batteries, motor temperatures in green, track ahead clear with passenger cameras showing the platform was clear. He pressed the button to initiate the door closing mechanism and a sudden shrill alarm sounded, jolting him from his morning slumber. The alarm protocol flashed up on the left hand computer monitor in front of him and he ran through it step by step. All fire detectors were quiet, passenger alarms were inactive and mechanical checks proved to be clear. Scrolling down to action point 6, he initiated a scan of the passenger door cameras. Twenty-six seconds later, he discovered an idiot passenger had left his bicycle wheel blocking a door from closing. A quick, sarcastic intercom announcement, embarrassing the offender into quickly moving the obstructing bike, allowed the journey to continue safely with only a short delay. I love this job, he thought as the train accelerated out of the station...

Having narrowly missed his train, James arrived at the A&E department he worked in 37 minutes after his shift started. A junior doctor, he immediately poured himself a coffee and started working through the patients waiting in the department. First patient had tonsillitis; the scoring sheet attached to the casualty card telling him the patient did not require antibiotics. Discharged. Next was a man rushed in with chest pain, triggering the Acute Coronary Syndrome pathway, allowing the young doctor to gleefully tick off all the required treatment steps without thought. Irene, an 82 year old with a fractured neck of femur, initiated on the fast-track admission protocol was dealt with in record time before his second coffee. Shall I have a donut or a muffin? he wondered whilst inserting a cannula in her arm...

Within thirty minutes of leaving the station, Sarah was at her seat on the production line. Today they were building circuit boards for the latest blueberry phone. She followed the clearly annotated pictorial instructions, cutting the boards to size and shape, soldering tiny components to the boards with remarkable accuracy, aided by the magnifying lamp and fine