Is There A Doctor On Board?

    If Accepting The Odd Goat concentrated on the author's recollections of a picaresque past in British medicine, this companion volume takes the reader behind the scenes of medicine as it was, and is. What can you expect if you are taken ill while travelling and you are lucky enough, if luck is the word, to have a medic travelling with you? And just as worrying, what can he or she expect? Why do British doctors have such a bewildering number of letters after their names, when doctors abroad seem to get by with two? How is it that doctors in Japan, or Portugal, to take random examples, write medical papers in such remarkably fluent English? And express their thoughts and findings so accurately? Or do they? How are doctors chosen for promotion – or rather, how were they chosen, compared to the present day? Must all medical job-seekers be asked how they are going to cope in their wheelchair? Why is it that medical conferences are invariably held in resorts with a great deal of social activity to distract them? Would it not do doctors a world of good to be patients occasionally? How can you recognise a good surgeon at a glance, without poring over official statistics or consulting league tables? How do you convince your doctor there's anything wrong with you? Is the internet really your medical friend? Or for that matter, is your trusted doctor always on your side? How is a doctor to behave when he is press-ganged by friends and family? Are rude patients bracing? To these and other questions, only marginally related to the healing arts, if at all (such as what is the etiquette when the Queen is having her tea?) this memoir has entertaining, even ribald, answers, all based on actual events, comic, curious, or merely grotesque.   
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