Letter to Santa from a stressed GP

All we want for Christmas is a bottle of Glenfiddich and to stop being the scapegoats in a broken system.

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Dear Santa,

I know you must be terribly busy at the moment, what with Christmas coming up, but I’ve got quite the wish list this year.

1) I wish for a community mental health service that actually works. And by “works” I mean they agree to see patients rather than sending my referrals back with a passive-aggressive note at the bottom like “Have you considered referring your patient to a private psychologist?” In fact I’m so despairing of your service that I’m thinking about referring myself!

2) I wish for the government to acknowledge the complex and difficult work that GPs do. I know the Department of Health and Aged Care thinks that general practice can be done by pharmacists, nurse specialists, physician assistants, plumbers, beauty therapists, debt collectors and even vets, but it just isn’t true. We spend years training and calibrating our skills and I’m sorry if we make holistic care look easy.

3) I wish for a Medicare rebate that supports the work I do. I look after a lot of socially deprived patients who haven’t got two pennies to rub together and because their rent has just gone up by 25% and they practically have to take a mortgage out to afford their weekly shop they sometimes struggle to pay a gap fee. So keeping billing item codes like the 721 and 723 next year would be a great help.

4) I wish that next year not a single patient comes into my room and says “Have I got a long list for you today, doc!” or “My periods are really heavy and I’ve brought in one of my clots for you to take a look at” or “My girlfriend says my cum tastes a bit like wasabi”.

I also wish that nobody this year tries to hack up a mouthful of phlegm in my consulting room just so they don’t have to come all the way back with their sputum sample and I also wish not to hear another patient tell me his wife has nicknamed his haemorrhoid “Little Harry”. 

Oh and I’d also quite like a poster, my room’s looking really drab – I’ve knocked out a couple of examples:

Afraid of coming to harm? Sara’s fluvoxamine turns chaos into calm

Keep young and fit with your weekly Ozempic

Kind regards,

Professor Candid 

P.S. If the rumours are true and you don’t exist, would you mind forwarding this letter on to God? He may be a little more understanding of my predicament, and I’ve also heard he’s pretty good with posters.