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Invasion of the UK Body Snatchers

Featured Author:

Max E Nurse

Max E Nurse is NursingLink’s “blogger from across the pond.” He works as a nurse practitioner in the UK and he writes about his experiences at his blog, “It shouldn’t happen in health care.”

Max E Nurse is a bit of a oddity. His experience comes from a series of lost directions.

Max is a Pediatric Nurse who got lost, ended up in the ER, then somehow ended up as a Nurse Practitioner in General Practice.

Max explains where the name comes from:

“The name is not an ego issue, it arises from a debate with Dr Crippins (nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com), who suggested that Nurse Practitioners were forgetting nursing and trying to be mini doctors. To which the response was that we were trying to be Maxi Nurses, not mini doctors. It was Crippin who first led me to blogging, but that doesn’t mean I like him.”

Outside the office Max enjoys family life with lovely wife and gorgeous daughter. He mostly leaves work at work, and blogs in his lunch break.

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More articles from this author:

• Urban Legends From Our RN Friends

So you may have heard me commenting that the “big brother” British government has banned smoking in public places and that they want to curb drinking too. With ever increasing taxes people can’t afford these habits so much anyway.

I believe it was your very own Ronald Reagan who said: “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it”.

Well there is a change in the wind, (if that’s not a flatulent remark). The Chief medical officer for Britain, Sir Liam Donaldson, appears to believe if it stops moving, carve it up and steal the bits.

Sir Liam says the whole population must be organ donors unless they specifically opt out. This is in a bid to address a limited amount of transplant organs.

Now I don’t know how the rest of the world feels about this, in fact I’m not even sure how I feel about it.

The voices in my head are unsure:

The caring nurse practitioner feels that this is a great final act, when I’m dead I can still do my bit to keep my patients healthy.

The squeamish dude is shouting, hey I’m dead could you just leave my cornea where it is and get off my heart and lungs, you wouldn’t take my offal away if I was a cow that died of natural causes!

The cynic in my head is screaming, oh my god! I can’t pay tax because I’ve died, so you going to strip my carcass for anything that might be worth a few quid before bunging what’s left in the ground.

There are other consequences to consider:

Taxes will go up to pay for all the transplant operations and the elderly population will increase even further. Rather than nipping to the doctor for a nitrate spray for your angina, you’ll be able to nip to the hospital and pick up a new heart. The old sods will live to be 130, and spend loads of tax payer’s money.

The age of retirement will go up to compensate. (I swear the longer I work the further I get from retirement!!)

Graveyards across Britain will be filled with headstones reading: “Here lies some unused pieces of my loving…” and “May the bits that are no longer in use Rest in Peace” or worse still: “Here lies the eyes of Mrs J Smith, the Heart of Mr Jones, Miss Simms’ Kidneys and the body of Mr Hugh Janus”.

So what do you think to it??? Is Sir Liam just drawing attention to the deficit, or does this scheme have real potential. Should I opt out and rest in peace?