Mister Tick-A-Box

Mister Tick-A-Box

It is easy, after today,

to swivel sights onto you, Mister Hospital Manager,

and take aim.  Easy, whenallI’vedoneisworktwelvehoursstraight,

flapped about in clinic, a flailing baboon, bollocked.

Not patients twisting my skin, no - restless masses in morasses,

innocent on the whole.  Not nurses, matriarchs in menopause,

cooing with cups of tea.  Or even my boss, dapper douche-bag in Dior. 

Only the boxes, the boxes, the cold creep of the

b ☐ o ☐ x ☐ e ☐ s , just waiting

to be ticked.

Check-box this…

greet a patient: tick a box. þ Examination: tick a box.  þ

Pen prescription:  tick a box. þ Constipation:  tick a box! þ

Registers, checklists, paper dross:  chock-a-block of Tick-A-Box!

Super safety checks in hospital Nanny State, a mad metropolis,

festooned with red tape, clerks like gulls, swarming and circling the edifice. 

Red ink drips from drooling bureau-cats, perched atop cloud-white paper stacks,

as worker-rats scurry and rant, ticking flipping pages in gloomy wings. 

Six p.m. rings and I’m wrung, nerves fizzing, tick-boxes whizzing 

‘round my head.  Pavlovian ape conditioned, castrated,

over-administrated.

Frustrated, emasculated,

I am blame you, Mister Hospital Manager, a.k.a.

‘Executive-Director-Consultant-Supervisor-Coordinator-Liaison Officer’ -

or ‘Mister Tick-A-Box’, to me.  You who are

office-speak like ‘governance’ and ‘targets’ and ‘110%’, you who are

Activity Based Funding and meeting about meetings,

(de)humanising resources and developing staff development, you who are

‘on the same team’ like 1984 with Ministry of 4-Hour-Rules,

and health-and-safety-cum-CYA^* (or CIA?) to the N^th degree, boy!

Stodge in the system, suit among scrubs, twisting my skin,

you who are.

And what next, Mister Tick-A-Box?

Consent form for the consent form? (who said they agreed to consenting, duh?)

Rectal probe I.D. checks, daily? (check we’re who we say we are?)

Last week, an Admission Form (Roman orgy of boxes) just to

epilate granny’s trichiatic eyelash.

I

s

h

i

t

y

o

u

n

o

t

.

Ah, on better days, Mister Tick-A-Box, I acquiesce

to your place, admit we surgeons hardly manage better.

But today - oh today! – it’s easy to wish for trust, just to

let me do my job, no stall, and unhand that box

in which you twist and crock

my stolen balls.

*CYA:  ‘Cover Your Arse’