Benjamin Daniels - Further Confessions of a GP

Man flu can be a cruel, cruel illness. My empathy levels for grown men coming to see me with a sore throat and the sniffles might be low, but when I myself am afflicted with this unforgiving disease, I crumble into a ball of snuffling self-pity and will complain endlessly to anyone who has the misfortune of my company.

On this particular Friday afternoon my captive audience was Vanessa, my medical student; she had been sitting in with me for three weeks. I like to try to convince myself that the medical students see me as a young, trendy doctor barely much older than themselves. I ask them what music they listen to and make sure they call me Ben rather than Dr Daniels. As each year goes by I find this an increasingly difficult undertaking to pull off. Bright eyed and enthusiastic, Vanessa seemed to take an interest in absolutely everything and everyone. Not once had I witnessed her display even the slightest hint of cynicism and it was perhaps this overwhelming positivity, even more than her youthful looks, that made me feel so very much older than her.

‘I never get colds,’ Vanessa gushed brightly as I explained my ill health.

Good for you, Vanessa, I thought as I wallowed further in the misery wreaked by the combination of afternoon surgery and my terrible man-flu symptoms. The constant stream of patients was exhausting but just about manageable and although Vanessa’s incessant enthusiasm could be grating, her high energy levels were keeping me awake.

Before surgery started, I had eaten three cloves of raw garlic in a vain attempt to ward off my snuffles. I’m not sure there is any scientific evidence that raw garlic cures a cold, but anecdotally at least my pungent breath seemed to be helping prevent patients from overstaying their welcome.

Just when I thought the end of surgery was in sight, I spotted that a certain Mrs Patrick had been added to the end of my consultation list. If I’m honest, my master plan to wean her off her constant visits by encouraging non-medical interventions had failed. With some delight she informed me that getting a dog was out due to the terrible dog hair allergy that she was bound to develop, and she couldn’t join a choir because the light in the hall where they rehearse might trigger off her photosensitivity reaction. Instead, she came to visit me so she could offload her ailments in the normal fashion. I would nod and listen sympathetically, but in recent weeks I had prided myself at being able to stand strong and bravely bat away her inappropriate requests for unhelpful medication and unsuitable referrals.

As she walked into my room, her first words were a damning complaint about our appointments system. Normally I would counter this by pointing out that she had in fact managed to get an appointment with me the very afternoon she called, despite having not a single ailment that could be considered even the slightest bit urgent. Instead, in my viral induced misery, I simply conceded an apology hoping to move the consultation along. Surrendering this morsel to Mrs Patrick was a catastrophic error. Spotting I was ill, she smelled my weakness and like a shark with the taste of blood she went in for the kill.

By the end of the consultation, Mrs Patrick had managed to glean from me two inappropriate referrals, some expensive medication she didn’t need and a course of antibiotics, even though she didn’t have the slightest hint of an infection. I simply did not have the energy to say no to her list of extensive demands and once I had said yes once, my resolve and spirit collapsed in a broken heap. As the appointment broke the 30-minute mark, I even resorted to breathing heavily in her direction, but even with my pungent garlic halitosis I was powerless to stop her. Such was the scale of her momentum, I think even a stake through the heart would have failed to bring the consultation to an end. When she did finally get up out of her chair, I could sense her indulgently wallowing in her splendid triumph. On her way out she briefly turned around and I think I may have seen the slightest upturn of the corners of her mouth. It might have just been a twitch, but if I’m not mistaken I was quite possibly, for the first time ever, witnessing her smile.

Slumped, exhausted and broken, I glanced up at Vanessa who looked at me with what I took to be pity in her eyes. I could imagine her wondering what had become of me that I could be so thoroughly physically and emotionally broken by a middle-aged woman with a few health phobias and a pathological addiction to coming to the surgery.

‘Don’t worry,’ I offered meekly. ‘She may have won this battle, but I’ll win through at the end. This is like the end of The Empire Strikes Back when the Jedis are all but beaten, but when I’m well again next week I’ll fight back Return of the Jedi style.’

Vanessa gave me a very puzzled look.

‘The first “Star Wars” films,’ I said, surprised that this should need an explanation.

‘Oh yes, I think I’ve heard of them. My dad probably likes them.’

As I’d been supervising medical students like Vanessa for a little while, the local medical school asked me to be on the interview panel to help select the next year’s first-year student doctors. It was a Thursday morning in late November and there was a steady stream of nervous but enthusiastic teenagers with sweaty palms and bitten nails waiting to be interviewed by a panel of three doctors, of which I was one.

These prospective medical students had already passed a stringent shortlisting process, which involved having high academic grades and passing an aptitude test. They had all written enthusiastic personal statements and had glowing references. Now it was the turn of we three doctors to make the final decision as to whether they were good enough to one day become doctors.

This is a pretty tough call to make based on spending 15 minutes or so with a nervous 17-year-old and although there is a subjective element to the decision-making process, we had set questions and a marking scheme in order to try to make everything as fair as possible. Medicine was once an extremely male-dominated profession, but now 70 per cent of students at our local medical school are female. This is fairly common throughout the country and it will be fascinating to see how the dynamics of medicine change over the next decade or so as the profession becomes increasingly female dominated.

Until I started interviewing, I couldn’t work out why so many more young women were being selected over men, but as I saw more and more applicants, the reason became increasingly obvious. The girls were just so much better than the boys in the interviews. They were articulate and enthusiastic with a range of interests and could conduct themselves really well. With the odd exception, the boys couldn’t. Such was the contrast that I was amazed that the percentage of male students getting in was as high as 30 per cent.

My two fellow interviewers were both female doctors and seemed undeterred by the huge mismatch in how the genders were performing. As we accepted more and more girls and rejected more and more boys I felt sure that at least one boy would do well and get offered a place. The next lad to walk in instantly reminded me of myself at his age. His shiny Marks & Spencer suit was as ill-fitting and unfashionable as the one I’d worn at my medical school interview. He was skinny and awkward and just looked so much younger and less worldly than the girls we had seen before him. His references and predicted grades were excellent and I was determined I was going to do my best to give him a really good shot. Unfortunately, despite being thoroughly likeable, he was stumbling through the questions and was scoring as badly as the other boys.