E-portfolios.

It would appear that some other counter revolutionaries at a despotic meeting of seriously ill informed and well time expired minds are suggesting that the flagship of the Scottish Silicon Glen IT revolution called NHS Education for Scotland, the all powerful e-portfolio is a waste of time. No.

Nothing new to those grunts on the ground for all our junior doctors have said the same for years but if those most out of touch at LMC level have heard of it then Apollo 13 must be hot news there as well as the recent launch of Sputnik.

Now we here at ND Central use many computers for a variety of things usefully like timing our microwaves, setting our DVD recorders, operating our washing machines, digital photography, car engine management systems, flying planes all simple uses of high technology which actually do something useful that NHS IT does not.

They work (more of the time than NHS IT) for we rarely if ever ring the “help” desk to get a job number for something that never gets better like NHS IT.

We do not use an e-portfolio to determine whether an individual can qualify as a doctor for those dangerous enough to be bad doctors get round this flawed system easily. Only a seriously brain damaged retarded educationalist dean dude high on some unnatural herbal substance would use this Braindead E-Retarded Portfolio (BERP) software to determine how good a doctor actually is.

Think about any other things that have crawled out of (NHS) Scotland and screwed up the NHS. Think Brown and Blair, think NHS “reform” and think computing (Choose and Book, Summary Care Record et al and their creators) and can you start a common theme re new ideas and their origin and how useful they are especially when it relates to high quality education and computing for the NHS?

Which is curious for once Scotland produced most of the world’s ships that usually carried people on real journies all be it at a high price in terms of some of our forebears’ health but then there was no NHS Education for Scotland so that must be why.

Those educated in Scotland for some reason see things that most people do not see. Weapons of mass destruction and an end to boom and bust are but 2 examples and as such they are deemed fit enough to screw up the United Kingdom’s medical education via Scottish IT. Even the opening screen cannot fit automatically onto your computer’s screen. This tells you how “good” those programming it are or how desperate they are to hide? Look which bit is cut off here.

The great thing about the e-portfolio is that none of the, excuse the very rude grunt word, sh*ts that devised this pile of retardation ever seemed to have used computers when they trained as doctors. Certainly no-one thought about security for doctors in training could at one time do their own assessments all they needed was an email address and anyone can find an NHS email address.

Our medical students, our F2 trainees and our GP registrars are increasingly troubled by the need to be groomed to complete their BERPs which is worrying as BERPing is seemingly occurring at an ever earlier age in medical training.

This is driven by a bunch of pillocks at deanery level and reinforced by their rubber hose beating stasi boys and girls who insist that doing a BERP is a good, not retarded thing because “it is er a good thing” but they are “only following orders” and having so much fun by setting increasingly tighter deadlines for completion of the BERP especially towards the end of GP training.

Our intelligent junior doctors and medical students see this for what it is a completely useless unproductive waste of their time. They want to learn from patients in the time honoured way of treating patients (remember patients dean dudes?) with good clinical supervision not BERPing in isolation with a computer hairy palms and poor eyesight being the sole result of this process.

Of course this might be the end result for those inflicting BERPing on their poor doctors in training. Give them hairy palms, short sight and a computer and a good BERP and that will make them all most excellent consultants or GPs?

Dream on dudes.

We are not computer phobic by any means here at ND Central. Indeed we are the complete opposite but when it comes to delivering care in the field a protocol on a computer or a good BERP are about as useful as a pacifist who does not know how to resolve a deadman’s click in a fire fight or someone unable to intubate and cannulate at a paediatric cardiac arrest when it comes to hands on clinical care.

Did doctors who did not BERP compromise patient care by being on wards looking after patients for hours longer than our current doctors in training spend tapping on keyboards? Instead of BERPing to prove how good doctors were did they instead spent time on the wards, talking and learning from their patients and seniors. This information was retained in their heads for years to come for future reference rather than sitting and entering meaningless, useless data on a hard drive to gather electronic dust and tick boxes?

Most excellent if the quality of patient care is now determined by a good BERP rather than the treatment a patient receives from a doctor. MMC will have succeeded despite its critics. And patients?

Is a doctor without a BERP better or worse than a newly trained well BERPed up doctor? As a patient should doctors be BERPing or treating?

We at ND Central think all junior doctors deserve a good burp after a good night out in the mess as part of R&R after some serious clinical work. We think that getting junior doctors to engage in seriously unproductive BERPing is a waste of their time (and ours) and totally unproductive unless electronic boxing ticking is the new way of medical/nuring/social service/anything training for the better? Believe us BERPing involves lots and lots of box ticking but sod all patient care.

Praise be to the Party and we await the day when the BERP will treat you now. Until then we hope to train a trained doctor who will do so without impolitely and wastefully BERPing.

After all those writing this piece did not BERP once during their training and succeeded despite this handicap of not being modern doctors trained by ticking boxes rather than treating patients which is the antithesis of BERPing.

History is said to repeat itself but we doubt any of our intelligent academic colleagues would make the same mistake twice with unworkable software . . .