Here's
another urban legend from another colleague.
A
doctor's surgery somewhere in Oldham: oversubscribed and underfunded.
The doctor is of Asian origin, possibly Bangladeshi. A patient
enters, possibly from a similar region of West Asia, although not the
same country. They speak the same language, but the patient isn't
fluent in English. It's some time in the afternoon after a slew of
patients; the doctor's edging on tired. The resident recently moved
into the neighbourhood.
The
GP performs a general checkup. He applies a motorised band to the
upper arm of the patient to test the blood flow. Normally, the
machine it's attached to beeps in time with the patient's pulse. This
time, there's no sound at all.
This
man has no pulse, thinks the doctor. He's about to die. Right here in
my surgery.
He
panics, and immediately phones for an ambulance. The patient waits,
bemused.
The
paramedics arrive, slapping on powdered rubber gloves and dropping
satchels full of instruments on the clinic floor. They do a basic
check which the GP failed to administer: they roll back the sleeve of
the patient's shirt. His arm is a slightly different shade of dark
brown to his facial skin tone. It has a rubbery, plastic feel.
It's
a bionic arm. The doctor just didn't think to check the arm. He
didn't look, or try the other arm, i.e. the real, remaining one. Nor
did he ask about it. And the patient, well, he didn't think to point
out to the doctor that the arm he was checking wasn't even real. He
probably didn't even know the function of the device strapped to his prosthetic
limb.
I
guess it goes to show that, no matter how intelligent we might be,
whatever that means, we're always going to be capable of making the
dumbest of mistakes.
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