National Elf Service: …Not the NHS

Paul R Goddard, a retired consultant radiologist, has taken a Swift-like move and penned a slim satirical cartoon book. A former President of various medical societies including the Radiology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, the Bristol Medico Chirurgical Society and the MRRA (UK), Professor Goddard is no stranger to controversy. His witty cartoons will cause much merriment amongst the workers in the National Elf Service, apart, perhaps, from some of the less discerning management and political acolytes (the more discerning will undoubtedly also enjoy the book!). There is an Elf Service in Cloud Cuckoo Land, a place that is sometimes known as Faerie and Elfdom. It is strange how the National Elf Service seems to mirror our own wonderful NHS but is peculiarly different…..in our system the patients are not cranked in on a giant conveyor belt such that a new patient arrives even as the last is leaving the surgery….and there is no huge physical gulf between the managers and the clinical staff as management try to pull the doctors over the cliff edge onto the rocks of despair! (Are you sure? ed.) In Faerie (Cloud Cuckoo Land?) the Right Horrible Jellybean Shunt is in charge…so different from our own world but eerily similar. He seems to think that the junior dwarves (doctors?) can work ten days a week. To find out what happens you will have to either purchase the book or steal one from some unsuspecting NHS worker who has placed his copy within easy reach. This book will make a great present for anyone who works in the health services… perhaps as a birthday or Christmas gift for a real worker or as a retirement present for a higher management acolyte?