Tick box docs (From Stroud News and Journal)

Tick box docs

DOCTORS are undeniably a pretty handy bunch but unless you're really sick, need sewing up or patching back together you've got to wonder if a visit to the surgery is really the best use of your, or their, time.

For those low-level ailments that see us scurrying off to GPs in droves there must be another way that could take the pressure of the over-stretched NHS.

I reckon a tick-box system would probably do it.

You have a temperature? Take these antibiotics. You have an iffy stomach? Take these antibiotics. You have a headache? Take these antibiotics. You have a virus? Sorry, can't help you there mate.

Let's face it, the lucky majority are an essentially healthy bunch.

By and large when we are ill a couple of days' rest is going to see us right and a trip to the doctor's with the inevitable lengthy wait in a room full of sick people is the last thing you need when you're feeling lousy.

I'm not trying to say that highly-trained doctors don't play a vital role in society, they do, of course, but I can't help thinking that when we go to the GP with our run-of-the-mill lurgies the medication is just a sideline.

It's going to make us better faster but it's often not strictly necessary.

With the onset of winter we are dropping like flies and there's a steady stream of sniffling, coughing folk beating a path to the doctor's door.

I'd hazard a guess that while the medicine might be welcome what they really need is reassurance and that all-important sicknote.

We need to be told we are sick, but not dying, that we will soon be well but in the meantime it's fine to take a day or two off work.