Milburn's departure deflates doctors

By Glenda Cooper
BBC Health Correspondent

Doctors: Unhappy with government

The painted billboards for the Princess Theatre Torquay this week were gaily advertising "The Boyfriend" - the 50-year-old musical which yearns backs to a heady past.

The same feeling permeated the 100th BMA conference at the resort.

As bow-tied doctors crowded the conference hall, and huge hotels with 1950s names like the Imperial and the Grand, you couldn't help feel they were longing for an earlier era.

An era of two weeks, four days ago to be precise. Alan Milburn's decision on 12 June to walk out of cabinet to spend more time with his family deprived the BMA of its offstage villain and - the chance to sing:

"It's Nicer in Nice (Where you could be sent to if you can't get a hip operation within 12 months on the NHS)"

It's no fun to attack Dr John Reid who's already adopted a conciliatory approach to consultants.

So in Milburn's absence the show stumbled. Forget The Boyfriend, it was more like Hamlet without the ghost - or given the location, Fawlty Towers without Sybil.

Audit epitaph

Dr Ian Bogle the retiring chairman of council made the joke that an audit of every bowel movement on every NHS ward would be a fitting epitaph to Alan Milburn, given his love of targets.

Sadly, for Mr Milburn, he no longer has the power to order a single bedpan.

The 70-year-old mayor of Truro, resplendent in pearl earrings imperiously demanded that drugs such as Ecstasy should be licensed and sold over the counter

The BMA Conference is one of the key dates in the medical calendar. Hundreds of doctors from all around the country attend it.

This year there were important debates, fiercely criticising government policy on targets, and foundation hospitals, while a ban on smoking in public places was urged.

But for the watching journalists some of the most interesting parts of the conference don't come from the barnstorming speeches made by leaders, but the accounts of ordinary doctors around the country.

Not that the word ordinary could be applied to the magnificent Miss Connie Fozzard - a woman for whom the word redoubtable was surely invented.

The 70-year-old mayor of Truro, resplendent in pearl earrings imperiously demanded that drugs such as Ecstasy should be licensed and sold over the counter.

With all the conservatism of youth, her junior colleagues overwhelming rejected her motion.

DIY masks

There was more support for Dr John Dracass, a Southampton GP who revealed that one primary care trust's response to the SARS crisis was to tell family doctors to buy a £6 mask from B&Q because the ones they'd ordered weren't effective enough.

Or failing that, to conduct their consultations through the letterbox.

One thought of net curtains irresistibly twitching in Acacia Avenue as doctors were forced to bellow through a closed door: "No, Mrs Bryant, I don't think you have SARS but here's your husband's prescription for haemorrhoids"

Conference also warned of the dangers of alcohol and called for drinks advertising to be banned (irresistibly reminding you of the old joke that the definition of an alcoholic being someone who drinks more than their doctor).

Junior doctors also put forward a heartfelt plea for the right to better accommodation during the minimal amount of sleep they are currently allowed.

One enterprising doctor even held up a sheet of Lord Irvine-esque wallpaper to suggest how rooms could be improved.

And as always to the delight of the audience there were the grim warnings about how the NHS is on the brink of collapse, doctors' morale is at an all time low and the government was to blame.

But then the year the BMA praises a government for its adroit handling of the health service is the year that we see herds of wildebeests sweeping majestically across the plains from a Torquay hotel window.