Avoidance

I've been avoiding you, dear Constant Reader.  I look back, and see that the last time I ventured here was three months ago.  It's not that I haven't thought of you, nor that I haven't had anything to say, no jobs to post.  In fact, quite the contrary.  There are some that I want to tell you about, and some that I need to tell you about.  It's not even the dreaded writer's block.  Posts and stories rise unbidden into my mind, and ache to be transposed to the page.

But I can't.

My anonymity on this blog has always been paper-thin. Some comments have even refered to me by name, and I have rapidly removed them, or asked the commenter to edit them.   Those of you across the pond, or just in another part of the island, won't know me, and therefore won't know my patients.  But, let's be honest: anyone who works where I work knows who I am.  There aren't many of us around, and it only takes one or two jobs for the connection to be made.

I cannot have my patient's confidentiality breached.  That's an absolute.  There is no grey area.  Anyone who knows me (here we go again) will know how precious I value confidentiality.

If I tell you about the police officers who spun their car off the road, you will say, "ah yes, I remember them."  If I don't say they are police officers, the story is missing the part that makes the story worth telling.

If I tell you about the chap found hanging (and I will, but with anything patient-related taken out) you will remember reading about it in the local news, and that patient's confidentiality will have been breached.

So I sit here, musing over what I can, and what I cannot, say.  And I end up saying nothing.

But I still have the need.

So, dear CR, read on...