Editorial Friday 4 April 2014: On Senior Healthcare Job Exit Logorrhea Syndrome

Gosh my old boots.

Outgoing (as in leaving) RCP supremo Sir Richard Thompson has given The Guardian an exit interview in which he says the quality of some NHS clinical care is a bit shit because clinicians are too busy.

Well, thank Christ he didn't notice it during the entire period he was in post as the president of the representative body.

Who knows what might have happened?

Sometimes, issues require deep and serious analysis; sometimes, they can be dealt with quite briskly.

This is what we might call Nicholson Syndrome, or more charitably, Senior Healthcare Job Exit Logorrhea Syndrome.

This is a highly infectious outburst of logorrhea on leaving a key job, which causes inadvertent dissemination not only of crucial facts about the safety and sustainability of patient care - but also, critically, about the speaker's dissimulation while in post and in power.

The dramatist and poet Ben Johnson wrote "language most showeth a man: speak, that I may know thee". It's hard to argue with that, and I'm not going to.

SIDE EFFECTS: Failure to tell the whole truth what you think about quality and safety (other than when walking out the door) may make people doubt your motives.