Coffee and Medicine
Like many members of the medical profession, I have an almost physiological dependence on coffee. For some it starts during med school, poor students drinking gallons of cheap coffee to enable them to churn through the enourmous textbooks they needed to study. For others it develops during internship and residency - consuming large doses of coffee to keep awake and alert through the horrendous 80+ hour weeks of hospital work. In our hospital the cafeteria had the
cheapest most horrible coffee imaginable (something akin to International Roast) served through this dispensing machine. You twist a knob to give a shot of coffee powder to which you then add hot water and milk. I graduated from one shot of this “coffee” into my styrofoam cup when I first started there in the third year of med school to having four or more shots at a time by the time I was a second year resident. I don’t know how my addiction would have finished up had I continued my specialist training in surgery. A neurosurgical registrar working 100 hour weeks, much of which in theatre, would have an inordinate caffeine requirement. I think I escaped just in time from ending up like the guy in this cartoon…
But I still need my coffee and although I’ve progressed to quality espresso ground from the best Five Senses beans at home, the coffee we have at work is still sadly lacking. The company that bought out our surgery have not seen fit to provide us with an espresso machine (or even a filter) and so we are stuck with instant coffee and a kettle that keeps breaking down. So it’s with great delight that I greet the coffee van that stops outside our surgery a couple of times a week. It’s not as good as what I have at home and at church, but it’s a far sight better than Nescafe. This is one of the best franchise ideas I’ve seen in a long time - a little van with a big espresso machine in the back, bringing reasonable coffee to the workers. Although I’ve learnt the lesson not to ask for cappuccino which is not great - strictly flat white, double shot and you won’t go too far wrong.
Anyway now that I’ve had my caffeine hit I’d better go see if there’s any more patients waiting. Can you tell things are a bit slow for me today? 
Categories : Medicine, Personal | 3 Comments
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