Hospital car parks

Contentious things aren't they? we have all visitted someone and resented the scrabble for change, or even how much we have to pay for visiiting someone frequently and how much it costs. Some people find hospital car parks a very useful metaphor for many issues. Here's one i really like. Hospitals are just like car parks because .......as soon as you build one it fills up.Well I guess that does hold up as an illustration. We are often told there is an over provision of beds in some sectors, yet the beds are all full.I suppose if you restrict parking then people find other means of getting to places, and the belief is that if you close beds and transfer the funds to community services then lo and behold the beds just aren't needed. I suppose as occured in the massive down sizing of psychiatric provision in the 80's.
Hospital car parks are another useful indicator of activity. If you go to your average District General Hospital at the weekend , what do you find? The consultants car park with its designated spaces will of course be largely empty, likewise the admin peoples. Yet the nurses car park (if there was such a thing) will be full as usual. Why so? Probably because patient need doesn't keep office hours and acutiy doesn't drop off at 5pm on a friday. In fact we are now told that mortality rates rise by up to 10% at the weekends due to the non availablity of senior medical staff to advise their junior colleagues (although available on a phone). It has been suggested that this needs to change.
Perhaps we will see all the car parks starting to be as full as the nurses' one?

Keep Calm and Carry On

The slogan that has probably been most read for years, and the product of a campaign that thankfully never was. I like many people I am sure have seen it on T shirts, posters, television presenters and even on on a coffee mug! Perhaps we will never know who penned this amazing instruction to the British people in the event of a German invasion, but it seems to sum up an approach to life that is pretty timeless. You can actually imagine for most people this would not have been to difficult to do as it's so close to the national mind set. I can actually envisage that life would have gone on as it was and that people would have adjusted to the awful circumstances that would have arisen following an invasion. The new rules, the sense of helplessness and the real hope that all would have been over ridden by a positive force that was awaited.
Pretty much like the staff in the NHS at present really, stoically carrying on quietly with their duty. Remaining calm and carrying on in the hope that the present invasion of cold political imperatives will pass them by.Of course they remain calm as its essential for the people they care for that they feel safe in a situation where they are vulnerable,
I  really hope that they and indeed all of us who care about the NHS do not feel they are being told as in my other rather more up to date alternative coffee mug slogan to "Shut up and deal with it".

My "London face"

I was introduced to a fascinating idea the other day from a colleague who was visiting London for the day. He had at one time worked in London and then had moved to the West Country. Whilst we waited for the meeting to commence he told me that he hadn't been in London very long that day and he had found himself re-adopting his "London face". I was intrigued by this and asked what such a face looked like. He told me it was essentially a blank stare and he proceeded to demonstrate it to me.
It was as he said blank. In some ways similar to the blank expressionless stare that some people with Parkinson's disease have. Devoid of expression and at the same time a bit threatening.
We discussed what the purpose of such a stare was. He considered it was to avoid contact, in particular to avoid interactions with people who are trying to sell or beg. I was familiar with the tricky issue of eye contact on the Tube and how that took some managing on a busy trip, but this really interested me. Was it a way of keeping to oneself, or a means of keeping people away.
A look that says "don't bother me".
As I was making my way to the Tube at Oxford Circus I noticed that all three Big Issue sellers I had passed didn't offer me their magazine.
I became worried, was I wearing my very own "London face"?