Dr No has a close non-medical friend – a salesman – who is forever trying to sell Dr No the idea that medicine is really just like any other job. All that special pleading, all that vocation nonsense, is so much hot air, he says. Other jobs have just the same stresses and rewards. Medics have no ‘special case’.
Dr No begs to differ. Dr No suspects that most doctors have an affair with medicine, and that that adds an intensity to the relationship that most jobs lack. He is not convinced that those who sell stationery for a living – as his friend does – have affairs with selling, let alone selling stationery. If they do, then there must be an eroticism to ring binders that has quite passed Dr No by.
Dr Helen Bright once observed that locums are all too often asked to “swim in troubled waters”. Many locums will agree. Often the clues that the trust is in trouble can be spotted early on – provided one knows what to look for – which allows one to beat a hasty and hopefully painless retreat before the sharks come out to play.