Clinic with Dr. W - 12/9/08

Dr. W is the consultant psychiatrist on the dementia ward Clisham. He is a strange, enigmatic gentleman. He towers over everyone and with a stature as great as that it’s amazing that you don’t feel intimidated or threatened by him. Why are we not intimidated by Dr. W? Well, that’s because he’s nice and he’s seemingly hyperactive restlessness and stuttering repetitions just destroys the image of a ginger haired sasquatch with OCD.

Anyhoos, I was sitting in with him for clinic on Friday. This would probably be my first full length encounter with the man apart from the hellos in the corridor and the short introduction on Monday. So we head into his consultation room, he sits down, glances at the clock and goes ‘’ Oh no, we are 5 minutes late for our first patient.”

5 minutes late....5 minutes late.......goodness....5 minutes late is NOTHING compared to the times when I’ve seen consultants waltzing in for their FIRST patient an HOUR late.
Then he goes about setting up his laptop and stuff. And begins his lecture on why he TYPES his OWN patient letters DURING the consultation so that the letters can be sent out faster instead of rotting away in a little cassette tape waiting for a secretary to return from a never ending holiday to get it typed and sent away.

Alright, so the principle behind this modus operandi is noble and laudable but seriously, if you’ve ever seen a psychiatric assessment clinic letter, they’re lengthy, you could probably get away with 2 if not 3. Ok...but to be honest this is not the reason why I was appalled by this. The reason soon became appallingly apparent during the first consultation.

Do you know those people who type with 2 fingers? Yeah...the people who are snobs who believe that stabbing at the keyboard with 2 index fingers can do the job of the ten fingers that God so graciously granted us. Well, yes, you could achieve the same, but probably at like twice to thrice the time, or for some, never. Yeah....so Dr. W isn’t exactly that bad. He types with 4 fingers.
It’s quite interesting to watch him type. Using different permutations of 4 out of the ten available. Oh yes, did I not mention that he’s a big man? Yeah....so u have this giant hunched over a fujitsu lifebook, daintily stabbing out his letters.

Most of you lot will feel my pain. It was just so infuriating watching him do that. At one point I wanted to just help him type his letters out. Unfortunately, he found good use of me which granted him more time to catch up with his typing.

Yup, I was mental state assessor of the day. I can probably memorise the MMSE forwards and backwards by now. Give me a couple more tries and probably the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination as well.

Yeah..so whilst I was busy trying to get my dearly beloved gramps and grans to tell me what day, date and month it was and which island and country they were in, and getting them to repeat words after me ( yes. I admit that towards the end I was funmbling over how to pronounce hippopotamus in the ACE test), there was Dr. W happily stabbing out his letters and quizzing the bewildered relatives.

So all in all it was a good clinic. Good opportunity to revise and practice mental state assessments. As well as to realise that my carefully groomed Scottish mainland accent of 4 years doesn’t work so well on these islanders especially when it somehow has an American tinge to it and when they are native Gaelic speakers and ‘slightly’ deaf.

But believe you me, someone please give the man some typing lessons for Christmas along with the black faced Jacobs sheep that he wants for his newly acquired croft.