The patients are revolting, or they should be

Copperfield considers how to mobilise patients for collective action

I returned to the surgery after the seasonal break to be met by a terrifying howling and clanging. The sort of noise, in fact, you’d expect the nation’s GPs to make as they’re driven insane by their ongoing existential despair and the apparent failure of collective action to resolve it.

Oh no, wait, actually it’s coming from my radiator. And by incredible and glorious coincidence, my very first patient is a plumber, so I ask his opinion. He suggests I try turning the radiator on and off again. Or maybe he was in tech support? Whatever. It worked.

This got me thinking. Many of us in general practice have to put up with dilapidated buildings and decrepit systems. Computers freeze. Heating or air con doesn’t work. Decorating or repairs never materialise. On the basis of my ‘While you’re here, plumber,’ consultation, it occurred to me that there is a people’s army out there we could mobilise. They could descend on us with their spanners, their paint brushes and their software codes in a sort of Patient’s Revolt, improving our working lives by fixing everything, and humiliating the Government for its inertia.

And it needn’t stop there. Collective action could embrace this people’s army as a way of cutting horrendous waiting lists. Sending those recruits into the front line would do way more than putting more bells and whistles on the NHS app or bunging us £20 a pop to use A&G.

So: plumbers to urology, butchers to general surgery, electricians to neurology, carpenters to orthopaedics, pest control to infectious disease, carpenters to orthopaedics, chefs to gastro, painters and decorators to cosmetic surgery etc etc. Watch those waiting lists shrink, for one reason or another.

I know it’s a stretch, but you could even argue that odd-job workers with no credible qualifications or relevant experience could boost GP ranks by taking on undifferentiated illness in primary care. Don’t laugh. It could happen.

There we have it: patients collectively acting on our behalf to sort out the NHS and embarrass the Government. So no more angsty howling. In fact, I’m feeling a warm glow. Though that might just be the radiator working again.

Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex