Do TV medical soaps increase our expectations?

Tuesday 10th March 2015 17:00 EDT
 

Surely I am not alone in enjoying medical soaps that receive saturated exposure on our TV. Casualty, Holby City, Doctors and other imported Australian and American soaps occupy prime slots.  While it is fun and even enhance our medical knowledge, it certainly creates false impression, as all Doctors, Consultants, Nurses, Social Workers are portrayed as perceptive philanthropist, caring and at our service 24 hours a day like water on tap?
GPs pay home visits without being asked, accompany patients to hospitals where they are seen on arrival, stay with them for hours and patients just walk in GP surgeries and demand to see GPs on the spot. This is pernicious, could not be further from truth and may raise expectations beyond realm of reality, ultimately end up in sea of despair rather than ocean of hope.
As we know from personal experiences, we have to wait hours in A & E, unable to see our GPs for days, especially for non-urgent treatment, as GPs are over-worked and underfunded, our NHS has become IHS, (International Health Service) soft touch for health tourists due to our self-opinionated plutocratic politicians’ holier than thou attitude.
Perhaps medical soaps should carry “Health Warning” that this is fictional and bears no similarity to real issues in our haemophiliac NHS which is constantly under pressure due to neglect and under-funding. So often hospital admission is perceived to be “High Way to heaven”.
Kumudini Valambia
By email


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