AND FINALLY
If a doctor annoys you, complain!
ON TUESDAY, I took my mother to see her GP with her habitual complaint — a chronic, debilitating cough.
Her doctor was clearly at rather a loss. But what a delightful person Dr O is — one of the most attentive, caring, patient GPs I’ve ever been fortunate enough to meet. An example to his profession.
Unfortunately we know they’re not all like that. That same day I read that the Care Quality Commission has found that if you complain about your GP, you’re likely to get better treatment.
But their survey showed that patients and their carers often worry about being regarded as a nuisance if they complain. The point is, if we don’t speak up, how will things improve?
Over the years, I’ve met brusque, chilly GPs more often than kind ones, the same variety in ward nurses — and don’t start me on hospital doctors. On one of the many occasions my daughter was a patient in Great Ormond Street (of all places) a Registrar told me: ‘I think of myself as a mechanic.’
I kind of know what he meant — but as a bedside manner to an exhausted and anxious mum it left much to be desired.
We can appreciate the NHS, yet it’s important not to sentimentalise it. There’s much to complain about.
For example, in 2016, Britain was 24th out of 49 high-income countries in the incidence of stillbirth, coming behind Croatia, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Sixty per cent of babies who die before and close to the due birth date might have been saved if basic guidelines were followed. It’s shocking — and I could go on. It may not be British to voice concerns, but we need to.
Why didn’t I protest to that GOSH doctor: ‘No, you’re not, you’re a paediatric surgeon looking after my child’?
You can’t make a member of the medical profession compassionate, but you can expect maximum, efficient attention — and if that is absent, it’s surely a duty to ask why.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel. mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.