BBC Radio 4, 2 and 9 January at 8 00 pm
In this radio documentary, producer Edi Stark has provided what appears to be a candid insight into the contemporary experiences of consultants working in medical and surgical specialties in Britain—in Glasgow and London specifically. The preview tape contained the first of two scheduled programmes, the focus of which is the cost to consultants' private lives incurred by massive undertakings within the NHS. Stark trails doctors along the corridors and up the stairs; she eavesdrops at handover time, and in small, untidy offices she samples the ambience of the confessional.
Though the narratives are compelling, and Stark's account is clear and unadorned, what stands out for me is the quality of these consultants' voices—their tense and clipped expression of what upsets them. Any mirth is tinged with anxiety, and at times the interviews and those interviewed invoke a double dose of déjà vu: for the grind of the hospital regime and also for those interviews with survivors of catastrophic experiences, which we may become inured to on television. However, these experiences (of the NHS) will not cease, and as successive interviewees refer elliptically to relationships they've lost or colleagues who have died too soon or children who do not see their parents, we are reminded that a great many clinicians seem to be barely holding on. Just surviving; giving everything to keep the show on the road. As one surgeon remarks towards the end of the programme, “The NHS has had its pound of flesh.”
I'm not sure that I would choose to listen to this programme if not required to do so. There is no light at the end of this particular tunnel, and for the second instalment (advertised but not available for preview) we are promised the following: how “next week” consultants will “talk openly about mistakes they've made.” If only all sectors of society were so open and confiding.
There is a certain voyeurism implicit in the first programme, comprised, I think, of its intrusion into other people's pain. To know the extent of such pain within the system one would need to know how many consultants Stark had approached to compile these interviews. Certainly, she has assayed many points of view.
Though Stark is sympathetic to these voices, her ire is raised by the question of private practice. Why do those who complain of tiredness, relentless pressure, and a falling away of private life apparently let themselves in for more of the same by practising privately out of hours? As Stark says to one doctor, “People will say he's his own worst enemy.” Some of the voices fall away and do not respond. They sound uncomfortable when they decline to state how much they earn.
The Consultants rehearses the ambivalence that is central to many accounts of medicine, proffered from within: depressed voices stating how rewarding it all is. It says something strange, sad, beautiful, or frankly absurd about the human condition that so many are prepared to sacrifice those whom they say they love (at home) for the welfare of strangers they meet in hospitals.