Opinion  

A serious fixing with Sellotape and cardboard is called for, and midnight finds me in my hotel room doing my best Blue Peter therapy.

You know how it is when you think you've prepared something then it goes all floppy and falls off, so you find someone who looks helpful, you improvise with a bit of sticky tape, and you make something work that isn't quite what you originally had in mind - far less elegant - but is actually far sturdier and works a whole lot better.

If only we all applied the same common sense to patients. Take Mr Lilac, with fibrosing lung disease, just home from hospital. He wants to discuss his tablets.

His chest is sore from a recent chest drain and he has a dry mouth from high flow oxygen. I look at his 35 discharge drugs - half of which are specifically aimed at stopping him from having a heart attack in 10 years time. His lungs have only six months to live.

Nobody in hospital was prepared to use Sellotape and cardboard on Mr Lilac because they have rules about stuff, protocols to follow, tables to complete. He could have had nasal prongs, artificial saliva and a swift discharge, but he is at a teaching hospital so he has been treated within an inch of his life.

He asks me not to admit him again - ever. I don't want to be treated by strangers according to protocol, he says, I want a doctor I know and a bit of common sense.

I wish he would tell our PCT, who are using Darzi money to create a third GP surgery, even though there are plenty of doctors in our town and our surgeries have capacity for more.

Mr Lilac is quite cross about it and I confess I am a little miffed myself, since it seems a singular waste of £3 million to set up a new surgery that does exactly what the old ones do.

What's wrong with a bit of cardboard and plastic on what you've got? We'd be sturdier and we'd work a whole lot better. Blue Peter got a lot of stuff right.

• Dr Selby is a GP from Suffolk. Email her at GPcolumnists@haymarket.com.