Recently in doctors Category
Christmas Hospital is a magical place in which to be ill or dying because at Christmas Hospital, it is Christmas all year! It was established by Charles Dickens in 1863, the embodiment of his famous maxim: 'Christmas is the best medicine'.
Ten facts about Christmas Hospital:
- All beds in Christmas Hospital have stockings hanging off the end, even in the adult wards. They contain the patient's blood pressure chart and a Kinder Egg.
- Under their scrubs, Christmas Hospital anaesthetists are dressed as elves.
- ECT patients in Christmas Hospital are restrained with special non-conductive tinsel.
- In Christmas Hospital, X-rays are known by their proper name, Christ-rays, thank you very much.
- On Christmas Day 1915 in Christmas Hospital, the doctors and nurses ceased hostilities and came together for one beautiful hour to play a game of football. Eighty-nine patients died.
- Christmas Hospital is the only NHS establishment which provides parking for donkeys.
- In 2004, an E. coli germ swabbed from a dead patient in Christmas Hospital was observed, under an electron microscope, to be wearing a nanoscopic Santa hat.
- A court order prevents Robin Williams from making any films about Christmas Hospital.
- Hidden within every tenth suppository inserted in Christmas Hospital is a shiny sixpence.
- Christmas Hospital is closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and Fig Wednesday.
Dr. Apple, MD was a short-lived medical drama that ran for just sixteen episodes between 1989 and 1990. Barely remembered today, the mediocre series was notable for two reasons: firstly, it ran on 24-hour news channel CNN, and secondly, it featured a talking apple that could do operations.
In pretty much every respect, Dr. Apple, MD was like any other medical drama, aside from the fact that it featured a talking apple that could do operations. The show was originally written for a human actor, James Eckhouse, but when he turned out to have a phobia of hospitals, an apple was brought in at the last minute to replace him. The orginal scripts were used with a few minor modifications - sequences involving things that would be difficult for an apple to do, such as driving or horse riding, were cut, and there were more scenes set in baskets.
Dr. Apple, MD fared reasonably well in the ratings and only ended when its star, perhaps inevitably, began to rot. At first, the writers tried to stave off the process but it wasn't long before they ran out of plausible reasons for their lead character to spend most of his time in a fridge. Then they built the process of decay into the storyline - the doctor's wrinkled skin and coat of mould, it transpired, were symptoms of a rare disease caught from one of his patients, a Mexican priest who had married a vampire in Las Vegas by mistake.
The apple disintegrated under the studio lights before the final planned episodes of Dr. Apple, MD could be filmed. Screen tests with Patrick Stewart as a replacement talking apple that could do operations proved unconvincing, and so the series was cancelled.
While the show left little impact on popular culture, the number of apples applying to medical school in the US rose by 0.3% in the early nineties.
Hello! It's me again, Dr Duncan Chambourcy, with another exclusive extract from Doctors & Doctoring, my standard text book for doctors across the world.
I've just got back from the wounded astronaut ward - God, those guys are heroes - and guess what I saw there? Only the fattest germ ever discovered.
It seems that during the recent construction works (I'm having a jacuzzi installed in my consulting room - I think it'll be very relaxing for me and my patients) a waste pipe from the kitchen got accidentally re-routed into one of the ventilation ducts above Major Skythwaite's bed. Major Skythwaite has a bad case of space 'flu, and it looks like one of the germs he coughed out - probably all mutated from cosmic rays - has been sitting in the duct for days, gorging itself on all the potato peelings from the kitchen. It grew so big that it fell through the ceiling! It's too huge and fat that it can't infect anyone, thankfully, although the Major's nephew, who was visiting at the time, is quite badly concussed.
It looks like the germ might make it into the Guinness Book of Records, so we're all pretty excited!
Still can't work out what that X-ray is. Have I even been holding it the right way up all these years, I wonder? Should I turn it around? Hmmm.
Time for another educational extract from Doctors & Doctoring.
Chapter Nine: Dealing with children
Every doctor's heart sinks when she looks up and sees a child sitting on the treatment stool. Children's bodies, biologically speaking, aren't even finished yet and so it can seem futile to heal, say, a broken lung that's just going to 'slough out' and regrow several times before Christmas anyway. But on the positive side, children will eat up any old pills you've got lying about the place, especially if you serve them in Smarties tubes.
When treating children the first thing to remember is: give them a good sticker. Medicine isn't really designed to work on children (genetically, children are more closely related to sea slugs than to humans), but a good sticker administered after a long and probably pointless bout of treatment seems to do them the world of good.
Most doctors design and print their own stickers - that's what the fifth and sixth years of medical school are for, after all - but here are some suggestions for appropriate sticker slogans in case you get stuck:
I've just got back from the wounded astronaut ward - God, those guys are heroes - and guess what I saw there? Only the fattest germ ever discovered.
It seems that during the recent construction works (I'm having a jacuzzi installed in my consulting room - I think it'll be very relaxing for me and my patients) a waste pipe from the kitchen got accidentally re-routed into one of the ventilation ducts above Major Skythwaite's bed. Major Skythwaite has a bad case of space 'flu, and it looks like one of the germs he coughed out - probably all mutated from cosmic rays - has been sitting in the duct for days, gorging itself on all the potato peelings from the kitchen. It grew so big that it fell through the ceiling! It's too huge and fat that it can't infect anyone, thankfully, although the Major's nephew, who was visiting at the time, is quite badly concussed.
It looks like the germ might make it into the Guinness Book of Records, so we're all pretty excited!
Still can't work out what that X-ray is. Have I even been holding it the right way up all these years, I wonder? Should I turn it around? Hmmm.
Time for another educational extract from Doctors & Doctoring.
Chapter Nine: Dealing with children
Every doctor's heart sinks when she looks up and sees a child sitting on the treatment stool. Children's bodies, biologically speaking, aren't even finished yet and so it can seem futile to heal, say, a broken lung that's just going to 'slough out' and regrow several times before Christmas anyway. But on the positive side, children will eat up any old pills you've got lying about the place, especially if you serve them in Smarties tubes.
When treating children the first thing to remember is: give them a good sticker. Medicine isn't really designed to work on children (genetically, children are more closely related to sea slugs than to humans), but a good sticker administered after a long and probably pointless bout of treatment seems to do them the world of good.
Most doctors design and print their own stickers - that's what the fifth and sixth years of medical school are for, after all - but here are some suggestions for appropriate sticker slogans in case you get stuck:
- The Only Nits You'll Find Are Ghosts!
- When I Can Spell 'Anaesthetic', I Can Have Some
- Alan The Lion Says He Could Eat His Tea Off My Retinas
- Eight Toes Is Enough
- If It's In A Jar, I Can't Play With It
- I Was Brave In The Gamma Helmet
- My New Blood Is Fizzy!
A child takes control of a stethoscope. As a doctor, this is probably the most dangerous situation
you will ever be in. This doctor was lucky, though he never spoke again.
"So we're going to take you back; deep, deep back into the past - before Happy Days, before Oliver! - back... So I need you to look deep into my eyes... deep, deep into my eyes like you're sinking, sinking, sinking... hip-deep in -
"No, wait! It's a prop session. Forget all that: look deep, deep into the swirling wheel; the swirling, twirling, wheel of...
"So - are you feeling sleepy? You're not feeling sleepy. OK, look, could you just breathe through this chemical-soaked rag?"
"No, wait! It's a prop session. Forget all that: look deep, deep into the swirling wheel; the swirling, twirling, wheel of...
"Actually, no, this isn't working. OK. Try this. Look deep, deep into my eyes WITH YOUR RIGHT EYE and look deep, deep into the swirling wheel of dreams WITH YOUR LEFT EYE - no, my left. My left. Your right. That's it.
"So - are you feeling sleepy? You're not feeling sleepy. OK, look, could you just breathe through this chemical-soaked rag?"
Hello! I'm Dr Duncan Chambourcy, author of Doctors & Doctoring - the standard text book for doctors across the world.
That's me on the left. The strange ghostly piece of paper I'm studying is an X-ray. An X-ray of what I've no idea - it's a medical mystery that one day I hope to crack. I like to get it out and have a look in between winking at nurses.
Anyway! In a spirit of philanthropy, I'm making extracts of Doctors & Doctoring available here on the internet so that you too can be a top-notch GP like me. There's no exams or essays! Just practice a bit between lessons. On a sock puppet or pet.
Whether you're a long-established doctor with your own pill factory, or a keen amateur who likes writing prescriptions at weekends, you'll find plenty of medical hints and tips in Doctors & Doctoring.
Chapter One: Can anyone be a doctor?
Broadly speaking, yes, anyone can be a doctor - it's hardly brain surgery, except when you're dealing with the brain, of course. But remember that the brain makes up only about 8% of the body, so the chances of you having to even look at a brain are less than one in ten. (The likelihood drops even further when you think that the brain - unlike the liver, glands, or knees - has its own armoured coating to protect it from injury and germs i.e. the skull.) Anyway, if a patient of yours should happen to injure their brain, they're hardly likely to remember where your practice is, are they?
Let's forget about brains and get on with doctoring.
That's me on the left. The strange ghostly piece of paper I'm studying is an X-ray. An X-ray of what I've no idea - it's a medical mystery that one day I hope to crack. I like to get it out and have a look in between winking at nurses.
Anyway! In a spirit of philanthropy, I'm making extracts of Doctors & Doctoring available here on the internet so that you too can be a top-notch GP like me. There's no exams or essays! Just practice a bit between lessons. On a sock puppet or pet.
Whether you're a long-established doctor with your own pill factory, or a keen amateur who likes writing prescriptions at weekends, you'll find plenty of medical hints and tips in Doctors & Doctoring.
Chapter One: Can anyone be a doctor?
Broadly speaking, yes, anyone can be a doctor - it's hardly brain surgery, except when you're dealing with the brain, of course. But remember that the brain makes up only about 8% of the body, so the chances of you having to even look at a brain are less than one in ten. (The likelihood drops even further when you think that the brain - unlike the liver, glands, or knees - has its own armoured coating to protect it from injury and germs i.e. the skull.) Anyway, if a patient of yours should happen to injure their brain, they're hardly likely to remember where your practice is, are they?
Let's forget about brains and get on with doctoring.
Being a doctor is brilliant
