This post appeared among Blogadda’s Spicy Saturday Picks on July 3, ’10
Doctors are not too well known for their IT skills. We guys usually eye the computer with considerable unease and are known to invent elaborate excuses to avoid even having to go near one. If I may confess, most docs confuse the word ‘laptop’ with an attractive and youthful female having pleasing attributes and large, inviting lap. I have often thought of broaching the subject with Susie over a cup of coffee and seek her honest opinion on the matter of fully loaded, higher end laptops with plenty of giga bites gigabytes, but every time some or the other thing crops up and the issue gets forgotten.
Many practitioners, though, do keep a PC in their clinics. The rich ones like our Hospital Director keep a Mac. The aim is obvious. To snare patients and con them into thinking that the doctor is cool, trendy and upwardly mobile. Casting an impression on the opposite sex is an added benefit. Still, they try their best to avoid having to use the computer, except on a those occasions when the urge to watch a pedagogic DVD or two becomes really overpowering. May I, at this juncture, make it clear that a pedagogic DVD is a piece of hardware that contains loads of ‘visually stimulating’ material that is usually sneaked in hidden among the pages of Harrison’s Textbook of Internal Medicine. Many a doc has been caught red handed by inquisitive staff members (and vice versa), lapping up such academic videos in the privacy of his darkened chamber. Now, a doc may be as cool as a frozen Tuborg when it comes to cutting the stomach open and playing Twenty-20 with the intestines, but when confronted with the challenge of snap shutting a browser window, a doc usually plops into a deep kind of stupor, bordering almost on coma. Even the Statue of Liberty would appear much animated in comparison.
The aversion of doctors towards information technology is rooted in their unique professional upbringing. The MBBS course is one of the toughest trainings ever designed to screw a half dead human being. When the blokes in the engineering or commerce colleges ramble around on Pulsars and Yamahas (the older ones roamed about on Yezdis) with gorgeous babes wrapped around them from head to toe, the medical guy loses his sleep over the harrowing details of levator labii superioris alaeque nasi and its nasty relations with other such stupid muscles. While the MBA geeks swim around in espresso coffee mugs with sugary belles clinging on to them in hordes, the bachelor of medicine buries himself deep into Gray’s Anatomy and sighs in despair while trying hard to mug the anatomy of the female breasts. Poor guy, he must learn to identify the breast as a ‘modified sweat gland’ if he has to pass the Ist term exams.
It isn’t that we guys do not try to learn a thing or two about the internet and things like that. One of my colleagues was so impressed by Google that he started prescribing ‘two teaspoons of isabgoogle at night with a glass of water’ to cure constipation. Another named his son after the search giant. Google Shukla.
In light of the above revelations, it appears that the medical fraternity is in dire need of professional assistance from the IT guys. Docs would welcome a short course on ‘How to download useful video clips from the internet and store (hide) them on the hard disk’ or ‘How to set up a chat without letting the wife know’. And Google would really do well to come up with a doctor friendly internet browser. They may name it Google Chromosome!
Now the question arises – if the GP is good enough, what are the specialists and super-specialists for? Generally speaking, the specialists are those lettered pedants of the medical profession who have an MD or MS qualification in addition to the bachelor’s degree in medi-sin. Most surgical specialities are outside the purview of the GP. Surgical specialists include
surgeons travel abroad.
Dr. Frank Lee Noegood is a piles doctor at an apothecary in Britain. The region where Dr. Noegood practices is inhabited by a large number of alcoholics who are do not have a regular source of income. These alcoholics, being heady by nature, often indulge in reckless drinking binges and outrageous gastronomic exertions and expectedly end up suffering from a variety of extremely painful disorders involving the unmentionables (which, hitherto, shall be mentioned in the most colourful of apellations, readers’ sensitibilities notwithstanding).
Word soon gets around and as a result increasing numbers of patients flood into Dr. Noegood’s clinic. Taking unscrupulous advantage of his patients’ freedom from immediate payment constraints, Dr. Noegood increases his prices for sigmoidoscopy, the most-commonly done diagnostic drill on the inflammed arse. His diagnostics volume increases massively. His lubricant supplier borrows a huge loan and sets up a warehouse of lubricants. At this point, his sister, Rhea Lee Noegood, who happens to be a dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognises these patients’ debts as valuable future assets and increases Dr. Noegood’s borrowing limit. She sees no reason for undue concern since Dr. Noegood assures her that he has the empty beer bottles of the alcoholic patients as security. As cheap credit is abundant, the loans get easily funded by a host of pension funds, hedge funds, soverign funds, mutual funds and insurance companies which are promised returns in excess of 100%. Flush with oodles of borrowed money, Dr. Noegood embarks on an exuberant lifestyle, has botox all over his face and begins vacationing at exotic destinations like British Virgin Islands with his gorgeous girlfriend.
customer assets into collateralised debt obligations called Painbonds, Poopiebonds and Fartbonds and manage to fob off these CDOs to greedy and gullible investors. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. Credit rating agencies like Fudge and May-Rules-Be-Lynched are then invited to stamp their approval on the deal. They rate Fartbond, Poopiebond and Painbond with CCC, BBB and AAA ratings respectively, in return for a fat fee. However, no one really understands what these collateral debt obligations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items. Bankers in Ball Street become tremendously rich.
One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager of the bank, alarmed by the falling prices of empty beer bottles, decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the patients at Dr. Noegood’s clinic. He knocks at Dr. Noegood’s doorstep, who then approaches his patients for repayment of the debts. The patients – unemployed alcoholics - however, cannot pay back the debts because they have no money. Cornered, and under severe financial crunch, Dr. Noegood then offers the empty beer bottles to the bank, which refuses to accept them and asks for the debts to be settled by cash. By now the clinic has transformed into a huge warehouse of empty beer bottles and discarded smelly handgloves smeared with poopie, but they are of no use as Dr. Noegood is in no position to fulfil his loan obligations and claims bankruptcy. 
generous payment due dates and having invested heavily in the sigmoidoscopy tools are faced with a new and dangerous situation. His antibiotic supplier goes belly up, his lubricant supplier is taken over by a competitor from India. The bank, nearly insolvent by now from the effects of credit freeze, and burdened by millions of empty beer bottles having absolutely no value, is saved by the Government following dramatic and desperate consultations by leaders from the governing political parties, most of whom have itchy bottoms. The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax (impots) levied on those who do not have piles.
