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 Waiting Room
Medical mishaps reported each week by our covert correspondent, Jackie Marshall, who works at the coalface of modern medicine - the waiting room at a National Health Service (NHS) clinic. (Why not catch up on Jackie's most recent trials and tribulations.)
Flu Jab Fracas
October 23, 2006
Flu jab time. We run half-a-dozen 'flu jab surgeries, and it's one of the times when you can really see the National Health Service at its best, when every asthmatic, oldster, diabetic and anyone else in the Most-Likely-To-Die category turns up for their free annual protection. All the practice nurses as well as agency Kiwis are drafted in and the speed and efficiency with which we shuffle people through to be jabbed would be worthy of Nazi Germany. They're piling through at a rate of roughly seventy an hour, and the saving to the country in terms of intensive care and lost man-hours is astronomical.
But something's a bit odd this year. The surgery is even more crowded than usual, and the average age seems to be down by a good twenty years on what it usually is. Dozens of well-muscled, bright-eyed twenty- and thirty-somethings pile through the door, produce their computer-generated call-up letter and take their seat in the waiting area. It's the first year we've relied completely on the automated search process for medical notes - the entire summer, we've had a team of student temps in the backroom inputting people's full records.
It's clear that the computerized scan has picked up a load of people who had previously slipped through the net. Some of them have expressed surprise and delight at finding they have qualified for a jab. And I'm a bit surprised myself, as frankly the students doing the data entry don't seem to be doing anything much quite a lot of the time. Especially after lunch. There's a small park round the corner and you know how students like a spliff in the sunshine.
Anyway, we're just processing the last few patients when the door to the nurses' room opens and Linda, one of our regulars, emerges, followed by a young woman in jeans and a GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, CHUCK NORRIS KILLS PEOPLE t-shirt. Linda comes behind our desk and the patient leans on the counter.
"Ok," says Linda, leaning over one of the computers. "What's your date of birth?"
Patient names a day in 1977.
"Mmm," says Linda. "Ah, yes, there we are."
I ask what's going on.
"Just checking her records," says Linda. "Julia here was wondering why she'd been given a jab this year when she'd never been given one before."
"Oh, right," I say. I'm dying for a cuppa. Go into the back room and put the kettle on. When I come back out to the front, Linda is frowning and Julia is looking ever so slightly panic-struck. "But nobody's said anything to me about it," she says. "Surely I should have been having some sort of monitoring?"
"Don't panic," says Linda. "Let's have a look."
"What's up?"
"Um," says Linda, "Well according to this here, Julia's got a congenital heart problem. That's how come the flu jab."
"No-one's ever said anything to me," repeats Julia.
I take a seat and start looking at the screen. "Julia Fenwick, right?"
She nods.
"Twenty-eight?"
Another nod.
"Appendectomy in 1992?"
"Yes," she says. "God, shouldn't I be seeing a doctor? I can't believe nobody told me."
I try to make soothing noises, though if I were in her position I think I'd probably be screaming the place down by now. "Ok, so it says you had an episode ten years ago?"
She shakes her head.
"No? No time in hospital in 1996?"
"I wasn't even in the country in 1996," she says. "I did a gap year in the States."
It's beginning to dawn on me what might have happened.
I scroll on down through the notes. "Can I just ask you... Your right leg? You never had it taken off below at the knee at any point?"
I see her relax, visibly. She stands on one foot and hops a couple of times to show me.
Something else catches my eye. Don't know whether to laugh or cry. "And tell me something else, Julia," I ask, "You were never a man at any point, were you?"
(Catch up on the most recent happenings in the waiting room.)
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