NHS Humour

The NHS is often in the news at the moment so I've been thinking about my NHS experience over the years - I did a lot of inadvertent consumer testing in my 20s. I spent an extended period in the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) - hospital stays were much longer then. It was, and I imagine still is, a teaching hospital so I came across a lot of medics in training, and the people teaching them too. One of these was Professor "Fred" Perry who I think was a cardiologist. On one occasion he was standing with a cluster of students around a patient in an adjoining bed. It emerged that patient had fluid around his heart, or lungs, I forget which, and this needed to be drawn off.

Fred picked on one of the students and said, "How would you position the patient so that you could draw off the fluid with a syringe?" The student thought for a moment and said, "On his back". "Ah," said Fred, "so you'd lie on your back under the bed, stick the syringe up through the mattress, and Bob's your uncle." There was a lot of laughter. I don't suppose any of those present forgot the lesson. I certainly didn't.