NHless

I've done enough moaning about my own health on my own blog so I'll cease and desist.

What I am annoyed about is the imbecility that is the doctoral register here. We have perfectly brilliantly qualified doctors who are falling foul of a daft online application system. The mainstream media have been, quite rightly, all over this one.

To be honest, I started off being unphased as it's about as ridiculous as corporate Britain. But recently (or to be more accurate, imminently) it has hit me. My GP is a locum and is about to have to go, and she has no job to go to.

Since my return from the US, I've been through a few GPs as I've moved around. Believe me, the locum girl who leaves at the end of the month is by far the best GP I have ever had. The thought of her not having a job leaves my jaw dropped. How can we train such talented people, let them run up massive student debts and then drop them like hot potatoes? I have always found it hard to relate to medical people, but this girl is such a natural and brighter than a flare. I cannot comprehend how we waste such skills. I don't care whether she would get paid over the odds -- I'll quite happily pay taxes towards that. In fact, increase National Insurance if that is what it takes.

My first GP surgery when I came back from the US was a husband and wife team. The bloke knew what he was doing; his wife was about as medically au fait as me so I just ignored her...a bit arrogant but you'd have done the same thing.

My second was in Leeds and he needed medication himself. I'd have given him lithium in industrial quantities. He was a nice guy, but kind of thick. His website was enough to send epileptics into A&E.

I've now fernagled my way into the best practice in this area, with the best GP I have ever known. And thanks to some bloody civil servant, she's off. I know she would be eventually because she is way too bright to be a GP (she'll be a consultant within a couple of years), but hell, I will miss her. She speaks English, not Medicalese (even though I can speak that) and she actually gives a rat's arse about her patients -- strange in this day and age.

I've written to the head of the practice to make a play for her to be retained. I am currently thinking about what I can write to my local MP that may influence future legislature -- it cannot be right for us to import doctors when our best universities produce such prodigious talent. I wonder how much of this is sexist? Stan will not believe me coming up with a conspiracy theory given my Telegraph-reading ways, but I honestly think that female doctors are discriminated against. The male ego kicks in, and the fact that women are more more people-friendly than men means there is a threat, so they're ignored. Go to the GMC website and and look through the registered doctors; from my casual analysis, only about a quarter are female. And do not tell me that there's only a quarter of females who are as bright as blokes...if you do I will prove this is not true by breaking your nose and altering the stats just a little.

My ex-wife was a do-goody two-shoes and she meant well, but she applied different rules to work than home. I still have the scars to prove it. I have no objection at all to equality of the sexes -- anyone who reads my blog will know that -- but I do object to discrimination in any form. Which is kind of contradictory really -- I want my doctor to have a job (preferably one that involves me being one of her patients), but I don't want to discriminate against equally well qualified foreign doctors.

I guess seeing that one of my local MPs is the Health Secretary, I can write to him and explain my concerns. And Dr T, go nowhere; you're an integral part of "keep Kenny alive" at the moment and just the smile on your face is worth a full regime of antibiotics.

Sorry Stan -- went off on one there.