by Enzo Bozza
29 APR – Dear Director,
William Osler said that Medicine is at that point where the mainland of Science meets the Ocean of Humanity. A kind of shoreline, I say, where there is a lot of waste coming from the ocean. Of eternal and stupid plastic. I am extremely sure of this when I see my young pregnant patient enter my clinic with a slip of paper, badly written in Bic pen, medium point Crystal, blue ink, slip bearing the heading of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department of my Local Health Authority, with illegible signature but I presume from a gynecologist, who writes, so to speak, the tests required for the trimester of pregnancy. I know more advanced gynecologists who have converted to the pre-printed form on which to double-check the exams required with an ICS. Power of technology.
I would like to ask Sir William Osler and my gynecologist friends a question: but if you feel you need to delve deeper into the progress of a pregnancy, why do I have to write and sign the tests? Perhaps because it is the only system to make them institutional and have them exempt? Or, I’m going off the cuff, was there a devastating swine fever epidemic when they were explaining the writing among future gynecologists? Or has the company decided that it takes two doctors to write a referral? So that the healthcare company can say: I have seen things that you humans…
What is certain is that in corporate metaphysics, a hospital doctor, when he works in private intramoenia, ceases his role as a public doctor and can no longer use the regional prescription book. Is he the nemesis of public service for abandoning his country? You betray the cause and I will take away your pen and inkwell and have the general practitioner who I am so fond of do it and have him fill out the requests from the specialist doctors from half the province. So she will do something in his life, besides combing the dolls and painting the nails of the hippos. So, as a general practitioner, could you kindly explain my company to me, why is it sending me the nice, somewhat Putin-esque letter in which it asks me why I am prescribing too many tests and too many drugs, knowing full well who the instigator is? And while we’re at it, could the magistrate explain to me why he holds me responsible for tests that I never dreamed of asking for and so many medications that I only had to write down under dictation?
I will ask Sir William Osler, during my next destination: between Science and the Ocean of Humanity, who inserted that no man’s land called bureaucracy? The mad hatter, or the usual envious person who, belonging neither to Science nor to Humanity, has decided to destroy both?
Because of this evil and viral envy, I find myself every day filling out demanding prescriptions in the name and on behalf of: gynecologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, orthopedists, cardiologists, pulmonologists, dermatologists, and since fantasy rarely surpasses reality, I have to transcribe also the tests suggested and requested by the concierge to the condominium on the second floor. If there was a Bancarella prize for bureaucratic writing, we general practitioners would always have won. In all editions. This is why they don’t want to recognize us as a specialization school: can there be a specialist university course in spelling and beautiful writing?
Enzo Bozza
General practitioner for the municipalities of Vodo and Borca di Cadore (BL)
April 29, 2024
© All rights reserved
Other articles in Letters to the editor
