Writing therapy
Imagine the person closest to you has bowel cancer. Horrible isn’t it. Obviously you want them to have good treatment. Who do you want them to go and see?
An expert on bowel cancer. Definitely.
Somebody who really knows what they’re doing. Oh yes.
Somebody with plenty of experience of treating the disease. Absolutely.
Somebody who is well trained in their field. Spot on.
Somebody who can care for them properly if they have complications. Nothing less.
Somebody who is good at creative writing. No? Are you sure?
Well you could go and see Miss K Scalpel. Even when she applied for higher surgical training she’d already done 5 years of basic surgical training and 1 year of training in anaesthetics and intensive care medicine. She’d got a PhD from a prestigious university for studying bowel cancer. She was an instructor on Basic Surgical Skills and Advanced Trauma Life Support courses.
She sounds ideal.
Or maybe you’d rather your loved one went to J K Rowling for treatment?
Don’t laugh, tomorrows consultants are now being selected mostly on the basis of their creative writing ability rather than their qualifications and experience.
Welcome to MTAS.
posted by Dr K @ 4:20 pm
7 comments
7 Comments:
Thanks for the comment!
I like this entry - it explains MTAS perfectly without having to go into all the complicated logistics of it all.
It really is terrible. So many doctors are so demoralised, and are being abused by this system. It's ridiculous.
Is it ok with you if I add you to my 'Blogs I Read' list?
Of course you can!
Glad you like the post.
Well Dr K, since Miss Scalpel is so blooming wonderful in every other respect, I imagine she found it perfectly easy to answer the MTAS questions with the flair of Jo Rowling, and thereby earned herself several interviews ;)
It's amazing, one of the enduring stereo-types is that doctors' notes are illegible and incomprehensible and now MTAS assesses doctors on their ability to distill their thoughts, experience, knowledge etc. into 150 word thought-snaps.
Just hold a giant paint-ball tournament for different specialities and have done with it. Last ones standing get their pick of the posts, first ones out get sent to wherever.
Regards - Shinga
Brilliantly put, Dr K. Absolutely brilliant. As usual, you distill the whole affair into a simple analogy.
(I, on the other hand, said basically the same thing, except I took up about half my front page and used wayyy more colourful language, for which I'll prolly get kicked out of med school, but ah well. Live for the moment eh?)
*gulps down liver-failure-inducing amounts of alcohol*
Thanks for the comments guys!
Steady on with that alcohol, Angry, or you'll end up in your teaching hospital with all your classmates coming to look at your yellow eyeballs!
I believe it's quite hard work trying to alter one's liver function with the use of alcohol.
As PRHOs, several of my coleagues tested their LFTs before and after a huge bender (3 days of 20+ units per day) with no resultant change - some of their LFTs actually improved.
I was not involved, of course. I'm far too well behaved for that sort of tomfoolery ;)
I suspect one has to go on a bender every single day for several months or years in order for it to have an effect.
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