The management team at Dorset County Hospital today announced that it intended to be fully responsive to demands from the local Patients’ Panel that ‘Patients must be at the heart of everything the Dorset NHS undertakes’. ‘This is a very proud moment for us’ said Eugene Watkiss, Director of HR, Estates and Ebola at the hospital. ‘Since we were officially opened in 1998 by the Queen, we have become one of the main employers in the County, giving work opportunities to over 3,000 people locally and service contracts that keep a further 2,000 people occupied. We are a centre of excellence in Health & Safety and Infection Control, with no reported communicable diseases since opening. We also have the lowest national level of clinical complaints and an admirably low mortality rate for all specialities’. ‘To further this success story, we now feel we’re in a position to admit a patient’ she went on, ‘and we’ll make sure we look after them really, really well. Obviously we’re nervous, and our clinicians are all currently undertaking an intensive training programme to make sure they can recognise what a patient looks like and the sorts of things they might have to do for them. On top of this, there’s also competition for the place, as we understand people do get ill in Dorchester. Baffling, but apparently true. Therefore we’ve got a crack gang of assessors sifting through application forms as we speak. I anticipate someone mid 30s, photogenic, nothing contagious, unsightly or smelly obviously, maybe some light botoxing?’
A representative of the Patients’ Panel was understood to be ‘too unwell to comment’.
Robin Armstrong is fifty and bloody feels like it. He was born and educated in Dorchester, Dorset, when Hardye’s School was more akin to Hogwarts than the office block it is now. He subsequently got lost in London for 25 years before finally finding his way back to the rural idyll in 2010
He now lives in the middle of nowhere and spends his life working and driving miles to buy a pint of milk. Any remaining time is dedicated to being a treatment resistant smoker, wine lover and occasional comedy writer. He is also a nurse, father, husband and general know-all.
He has no further ambitions in life and is allergic to IKEA and chickpeas.
