MEDICAL MATTERS: We doctors like our cars. This may be because we spent so long in college we were generally a fair age by the time we actually got one. Our school pals who went straight to work gave us lifts in their little runabouts. This rankled. After all, we were the ones who worked hard in school.
So one of the first things that most of us did after hearing we had passed final med was rush to the bank and add to our considerable debt with a car loan.
Long ago, when I qualified, a newish Alpha Sud was the trendy thing to buy. I was one of a select group of Galwegians who were so obsessed by cars that we decamped to Northern Ireland, where the motors were cheaper and the wages were better.
Most of us eventually returned to the South with high-powered Japanese cars and Northern wives. It would have been intriguing if it had been the other way around.
The first car I bought was an Austin Maxi which cost about as much as a good night out. I bought it to go to Galway for the weekend as it wasn't much dearer than the return journey on the bus. Bad and all as it was (and it was bad) it was a far superior car to the horrible old Ford Cortina that the newest consultant drove.
In that job it was customary for the consultant and the junior doctor to share a car to the outlying clinics. The junior, whose parents were well off, drove a new Rolls Royce which he intended to import to the South and thereby make a fortune. He had to climb out of his Roller every second morning and hit off into the distance as a passenger in a rusty Cortina with no radio and a broken heater. The consultant never sat in the Rolls.They have their pride, consultants.
Your doctor's car reflects on the doctor so it is intended to show worthiness, a sense of tradition, an appreciation of the good things in life and steady quiet conservatism. It says "my owner is such a good doctor they earn pots of money and spend it well".
Bling is to be avoided. The status of doctors with the public is not what it was but we have no wish to be identified with boy racers. The Mercedes or BMW usually does the trick.
Traditionally, the huge car was parked outside the hospital all day while the doctor's wife struggled around the town with shopping and children in a Toyota Starlet. Now most spouses show their love for the countryside by owning a four wheel drive.
You could be forgiven for thinking that a safari is under way most school mornings in any Irish city as you wait behind lines of four by fours doing very little to the gallon.
With practice you can tell the type of doctor from the car. GPs like Volvos, the safe all-rounders. Surgeons go for raw power, say a four litre off-roader. Add bull bars if they're orthopaedic surgeons. Psychiatrists like to show a more cerebral aspect, vintage Jaguars or Rovers for them.
As for anaesthetists, well you never know with them. Just look at whatever the surgeon has, and it's a safe bet they resent it.
It is a sad fact that most doctors are not green. They spend years using and discarding costly disposable everything in hospitals and they are damned if they are going to make up for it with their emissions. I know one GP in Glasgow who does not possess a car and who gets by with a bicycle and public transport, which says a lot for Scotland, but is probably impossible here.
Years after the Austin Maxi was reincarnated as a hen-house in Irvinestown, I was driving to a branch surgery in my beloved Ford Granada. I loved that car - it was old, huge, fast and thirsty.
I saw an elderly bachelor farmer on the road and offered him a lift. He gingerly inserted his manure-caked Wellingtons, followed by the rest of him, and inspected my beloved vehicle. It seemed to distress him.
He baldly informed me that a proper doctor would drive a decent car. The following week I gave him a lift in my gleaming new Fiat Multipla.
He duly inspected the spacious interior and the space age dashboard. He became even gloomier.
"The doctors are making too much money. It's not right," he declared, before lapsing into pained silence. In future, to spare him any more suffering, I let him walk.
He probably needed the exercise.
Pat Harrold is a GP with a practice in Nenagh, Co Tipperary.
