When future historians – or historian-robots – look back at us, what will they determine the last good day to have been a doctor? Post-pandemic, when the wheels finally came off and medical professionals had to strike to call attention to their etiolated pay, chronic underfunding and the NHS’s impending doom? Pre-pandemic? Pre-Thatcher? Or before more ineffable notions crept in, such as the growing distrust of experts, patient entitlement, or the rise of ambulance-chasing lawyers encouraging even the most mildly and unavoidably inconvenienced to sue?
We are a long way from the well-ordered worlds of Dr Welby or Kildare now. Dr Finlay’s casebook would be a groaning, overstuffed thing filled with intractable problems. Even ER, with its gunshot-riddled beds and patients dying from lack of insurance, is starting to look like the representation of a golden age.
