MEDICAL MATTERS:A survival guide to the weekend medical conference, writes Pat Harrold
ANYONE WHO books into a hotel at this time of the year may see a Volvo pull up and disgorge a medical family. The kids are excited, the parents relieved, and at least one of the parents carries some fairly business-like clothes.
They are off to a conference, one of those areas where medical and family life connect. The doctor wants to catch an interesting speaker, the family has been feeling neglected; the conference is the perfect answer. The kids can let off steam in the pool while you engage with experts.
If you are a specialist in Ireland, you are one of a small select group. There may be only a handful of your kind in the country, so you need to meet, not only to plan strategies, discuss treatments and meet the international experts, but also to play golf, get drunk and watch rugby on the television. It's called bonding. After all, you could be at the damned rugby match if you didn't have to spend most of your weekend sitting in a dark lecture hall.
Unfortunately, there is usually golf. This game follows doctors like a family curse. There is a reason for this. An awful lot of medicine is involved in giving a lot of attention to small, out of the way areas that usually don't come under scrutiny. We peer at ear drums and tonsils, we are concerned with appendixes and cervices. We utilise fancy gleaming metal tools, such as fibre optics and MRI scanners, to gain access to tiny, obscure areas. We do this in hospitals and surgeries which are drenched with sterilising chemicals, where we work long hours and have no access to our families in a competitive and unreal sub-culture.
So what do we do for a break? We go to golf courses, which are drenched with chemicals to keep the sward sterile. We ignore the breadth of God's green countryside to concentrate on a miserable little hole in the ground, into which we can just about manage to fit a small white ball with some expensive metal implements.
The whole business takes us away from the real world and our families for an unconscionable amount of time. The mystery about golf is not why doctors do it, but why anyone except doctors would want to.
At every conference, a photographer will eventually emerge. Now, the conference veteran knows that these photographers represent the medical weeklies. And the only reason doctors get the medical weeklies is to look at the photographs. They do this for two reasons: to see where their old acquaintances are working; and to how well they have aged. So, at the first sight of the photographer, position yourself beside somebody who is about 50 years older than you and twice your waist measurement. You will look like a slender youth when your photo appears in the Irish Medical Whatsit.
Then lie about your job. Junior dogsbody in Castlebar hospital can be easily translated to "consultant, Mayo Clinic".
Stalls are set up in the lobby, rather in the fashion of a country market, where the latest medicines, computer packages and gizmos are available. The great thing about this is that you can finally get hold of the chancer who sold you all that stuff at the last conference and find out how it works. There is a tradition that the stalls also have biros, torches, sweets, cuddly toys and other free gifts that are designed to gladden the heart of a six-year- old. Your own child loves this stuff, so grab with both hands.
Dinner on Saturday night is usually not a black-tie affair, but everyone appears in a suit or posh frock. The first time I went to a conference, I showed up in my usual denims. I was surprised to find that I was in great demand, and everyone was eager to talk to me, until I found out that they thought I was Jimmy Crowley, who was appearing elsewhere in the hotel.
There is an awful lot less drunkenness than you would imagine at these affairs. These are, after all, professionals who managed to get this far by keeping it together. And they have to be up in the morning. I usually find that it is best to hang out with the drug reps as they are usually the best company.
Eventually, it is all over, and you depart on Sunday. You have a folder filled with notes and handouts. You can judge the value of the conference by the fate of this handout. It can be thrown in a corner and never seen again. Or it can be taken out on Monday, studied and put to work in changing your practice for the better.
At any rate,your children have set out for school with biros advertising the latest treatment for erectile dysfunction.
Conference groupie Pat Harrold is a GP in Co Tipperary
Muiris Houston is on leave