This week’s episode of Dr Who showed early promise, with khaki tea-making squaddie daleks, complete with Union Jack logos, but started to unravel the moment Ian McNeice started impersonating Robbie Coltrane, instead of playing Churchill, and descended into farce when the Lego-inspired bootylicious make-over daleks arrived. There was but one consolation: Bill Patterson, late of Sea of Souls, was finally revealed, as has long been suspected, as an alien.
The GMC, now that it has adopted dalek methodology to manufacture Tomorrow’s Doctors, has no doubt installed Pattersons in every medical school. The fruits of these alien endeavours are already abroad on our wards and in our surgeries; but in amongst the robodocs, there are some who lack dalek DNA, and who have retained their natural and human curiosity. One such doctor is a young GP, who blogs as the Pondering Practitioner.
Risqué initials aside, PP has shown herself, in relatively few postings to date, to be indeed a thoughtful doctor. She has an instinct for the dilemmas of practice, and writes intelligently about them. Recent posts have covered home visits, living in your patch, and wising up to what is really going on in the consultation.
The PMETB – previously responsible for junior doctor training in the UK – merged with the GMC at the start of this month. As a result the GMC is now responsible for all stages of medical education and training. Postgraduate medial education – already ludicrously over-infested with laughable notions of competency based training – is now set to receive a sinister injection of dalek DNA.
Over-regulated tick-box training will do nothing to foster the PPs of this world; and yet it is these doctors, the real Tomorrow’s Doctors, and not the GMC manufactured robodocs, who are the doctors we need. Dr No hopes the other Doctor is not too busy fighting daleks on Skaro to realise that the old enemy are alive and well – and have already infiltrated every aspect of our medical education.