Discharging a patient home after laparoscopy,* I sign her off work for two weeks. She offers me a tenner to sign her off for a month. I laugh, but she’s serious and ups her offer to fifteen quid. I suggest she see her GP if she’s not feeling up to work after a fortnight. I clearly need to dress smarter if that’s the level of bribe I’m attracting. On the way home I wonder how much she’d have needed to offer before I said yes. Depressingly, I put it somewhere around fifty pounds.
