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| Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association,
03-July-2009, Vol 122 No 1298
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Political Correctness and the Surgeon
Liam Kirwan. Published by AuthorHouse
(UK), 2008. ISBN 9781434346223 (paperback). Contains 300 pages. Price £7.30
+ shipping
Liam Kirwan was a professor
of surgery from Cork, Ireland who has gone into print.
His message is conveyed as a
long and extensive monologue from himself to a mysterious senior management
figure called Patricia (Hospital Correctitude Commissar).
In this monologue, the areas
of managerial madness are described and explored in detail. All the individuals,
offices, processes, and procedures are given descriptively comical names
(The Maladroit Fellow is a surgeon who prefers Pseudowork i.e.
attending management meetings. The Wizards of the Black Hole preside
over the smoke-and-mirrors of contemporary healthcare accounting. The Time
Police from Fortress Brussels exercise totalitarian powers over
allowed hours of work).
Indeed, the reader is left in
no doubt that, in the latter part of his career, the good professor found
himself in an absurd Alice in Wonderland environment where the inmates had taken
charge of the asylum.
The prose is richly Celtic,
and some of the sentences are longer than Judge Jeffreys’, but the whole
work is extremely entertaining for its droll language and dark insightfulness.
It would make good bedtime reading and an agreeable present for any hospital
colleague with a sense of humour.
Philip Bagshaw
Associate Professor of Surgery Christchurch Hospital and University of Otago, Christchurch |
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