Thursday, October 26, 2006

Lack Of Food

We had a lot of Muslim staff at our obscure little backwoods hospital, for some unfathomable reason.
Some of them were senior doctors, and the men were, on the whole, charming to all the female staff.
None of the Muslim women wore anything other than Western dress; there was never any sign of a veil.

The Muslim staff all observed Ramadan, and we became used to checking on its date each year, in order not to tempt or offend them into breaking their fast in the daylight hours by inadvertently offering them a cup of coffee after a frantic delivery on Labour Ward. Only once, as a student midwife, did I offer, and I was snapped at quite royally for my pains :-)


I did sometimes wonder, seeing some of the junior staff exhausted from long hours on-call and seeming really quite hypo, how much that combination might be affecting their clinical skills. I certainly would not have wanted them to be operating or performing a forceps delivery on me in those conditions of exhaustion and lack of food, and I do still wonder whether or not proper risk assessment has ever been done of any members of staff who have been deprived of food; whether willingly (as in fasting) or unwillingly (as in simply not having the time to eat) .

It is probably not even possible to raise such questions, given the current political climate in Britain today.

None of us liked to say anything even then, and no-one would dare to now.

We did have a delightful female Hindu registrar, who wore her sari, and was unfailing gentle to everyone, staff and women alike. She was great to work with and her clinical skills were superb.

A lot of our junior SHO grade staff were European, so we really did have quite a mixed bunch of medical staff rotating through the Unit. It was brilliant experience and I learned a huge amount about other cultures.

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