https://www.facebook.com/kim.turner.7127/videos/10153888348536202/
Ok. So, I can't link that as an actual video, because facebook and blogger do not mix - like me and the sodding tories, right now - but you should really watch it.
Because it is totally right.
The young woman pictured therein was nearly killed because of a driver who was tired, because tired people make mistakes. Tired people make mistakes.
They make mistakes.
Now, the government - in particular, Jeremy Hunt, whose name I now genuinely have to be careful saying in public, because of the other word I end up saying inadvertently in place of his surname - wants to take the junior doctor contract, and make it longer, for the same pay.
I think the proposed hours are something like 7AM - 10PM.
The government is going to end up not only forcing medical professionals, many of whom barely see their beloved children as it is, to work longer for the same cash they would otherwise get - which is barely topped up by being on-call, for which the wages are below the minimum wage anyway - but they will also make them tired.
Doctors are already tired and stressed. It kind of comes with the job, doesn't it? Saving peoples' lives. Saving people's lives at almost any and every hour of the day - because there is no such thing as a closed Accident and Emergency department, my friends. They are always open.
And now the government wants to make them provide routine care 7 days of the week, 7AM to 10PM.
And the bloody government are angry about them striking over this, because the strikes will affect patient care? I find that a mix of morbidly hilarious and frankly terrifying, because the proposed contract will inevitably result in poorer quality patient care as it is!
How dare they?
They will be forcing our doctors into a situation where they can no longer provide the fucking superb standard of care they usually provide, both to normal and emergency patients. They will be forcing them into situations where they will almost inevitably start making more mistakes in surgery, which I shouldn't need to tell you could be potentially lethal for the patient.
Now, beyond the obvious effect on patients, what will this do to the doctors?
Because if I had been that driver, who had hit that girl, and nearly killed her, and broken her legs and her collarbone and taken her out of ice skating for years, I can guarantee you that I would not have ever, ever forgiven myself. I would hated myself, absolutely despised myself, for letting that happen, until the day I died. Forget that I had been awake for 36 hours, forget that it was an accident, I would have genuinely hated myself.
Now... if I had, in the shoes of the driver, actually caused that poor girl's death...
I would have killed myself.
I would, within the month - perhaps even within the week - have succumbed to the grief of the impact I had had on so many innocent lives, and I would have taken my own life. I would have sought out a tall building to throw myself from, or deliberately gone out for a night drive and crashed my car at 80mph, or I would have hanged myself like the monster I thought myself to be.
I would have murdered myself.
Ok.
Now imagine that you are in the shoes not of the driver, or the girl.
Imagine that you are a doctor.
A junior doctor, perhaps, but a doctor either way.
It is your duty, your oath-sword duty, at any cost, to save and defend life. To save lives, is your life. Perhaps you feel a peculiar kinship with firemen, whose mission statement - at least where I live - is quite simply "That Others may Live".
Because as a doctor, you'd give your life to save your patient's, because defending life is sacred, because life is sacred. Because life is sacred and the most valuable thing, because it is only living things that can create and feel love and think and-
Oh no.
You've killed her.
You were tired. You've been awake since at least 6AM so you could be ready for work on time, and it is now potentially as late as 11PM, or 12AM, or 1AM, or even later! Because you're on call! Of course, you're on call! Not just because you need - you so desperately need - the pittance they pay you for saving the lives of this planet's most successful and compassionate species, who love and laugh and cry and weep, but because it is what you do, because you are a Doctor! You are a guardian of life!
And you've just killed a young girl whose last words before undergoing anaesthesia were "I'll have strawberry icecream when this is over, mum."
I mean, she's not dead yet, actually. No. You and your team are still working frantically to stem the flow of blood from that cut you shouldn't have made, but you know she's dead. There's no way to save her - or if there is, you can't see it in the state you're in now.
And then she dies.
And you feel like you deserve to be dying instead, because you violated everything it meant to be a doctor, and failed so miserably in your sacred duty to save and defend life that you let someone die on your watch.
They don't get to wake up any more.
They are dead.
Because you were tired and you fucked up.
And then you have to go and tell her parents.
And her mum is already holding her icecream.
But she's not going to eat it, because you fucking killed her. You, with those hands, those hands that were meant for saving lives, have fucking killed her because you were tired and you fucked up.
Are you... are you seeing my point at all? Because if you're not, you're beyond blind, and beyond saving.
Because that would happen. More than once. Many times, in fact. Because suddenly, they'd all be tired, because a man in government who clearly has no idea what doctors do felt like they weren't doing enough.
And instead of pursuing the recruitment of additional doctors to supply the increase strain he's gonna put on their poor, miracle working backs, instead of pursuing more budget money to make their lives a little bit more personally rewarding, instead of giving them some kind of subsidy on things for their children for the marvellous, marvellous service they've dedicated so much of their lives already to giving us...
He's just gonna let them suffer like the monster he is.
But you know why, right?
He wants to make the NHS suck just that little bit more, so we're all a tad more ok with them privatising it, and making it a soulless machine for grinding us into gold.
I am not fucking buying it, Jeremy Hunt.
~ Baxster Brand
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