من الأشهر اليوم؟

A GP has minutes to try to convince a person that life is worth living. It’s a challenge that brings rare rewards. By Gavin Francis
Edinburgh’s old Royal Infirmary has been abandoned for more than a decade, its doors boarded up, its gutters overgrown with buddleia and fireweed. Through the scaffolding you can just about make out the way to the old ward 1 and its annexe, ward 1A, where urgent medical admissions were once wheeled on trolleys directly from A&E. It was unusual for a ward to have an annexe, but 1A was set up for a particular clientele: it was the designated ward for anyone who had attempted suicide. I trained in medicine in the hospital throughout the 1990s, worked for a while in the adjacent A&E, and it is not far from the GP practice where I work now.
There was a whiteboard in 1A’s office: the names of the inpatients were listed in a column down one side, then in rows from left to right was written each patient’s date of birth, supervising consultant, any outstanding tests and, last of all, the bleak roll call of the drugs each had taken. Occasionally in place of a drug combination would be written “jumper”, and an estimated height of fall. The beds were arranged in a rough circle; some patients lay with covers pulled over their heads – from a feeling of indignity, perhaps, or to escape the glare of the lights. Others lay hardly aware, the black liquid charcoal they had been obliged to swallow dripping from their mouths, mingling with rivulets of mascara-soaked tears. There was a palpable sense of misery and despair in the small space. Continue reading...