As a student, I prided myself on having an independent and often controversial approach to a whole host of contemporary issues. I confess I looked down on those junior doctors a few years ahead of me who seemed to do nothing except work and bland activities such as ‘going to the gym’. Where was their activism, their passion? Surely I would be different, campaigning for change on issues that mattered most – the developing world, health inequalities in the UK, unravelling the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in medicine? Amazing how quickly one becomes a neat little clone. Perhaps you fight against the system for the first house job, second house job…then the insidious march along the medical assembly line begins. Suddenly you find yourself auditing the most unbearably mundane topics in your spare time, getting every procedure signed for in logbooks, even recording your every movement on monitoring cards that tell you to write ‘natural break’ when you go to the bathroom. As the indoctrination continues, you find yourself doing increasingly bizarre things to comply with the system. One day let yourself are shooed off the ward, half-completed blood forms in hand, on the stroke of five p.m. by an agent of the state - ‘Shame you only had time to examine the patient’s right leg, doctor, but you know it’s a breach of contract to stay after five.’ The next day you find yourself, still suturing Mrs. Jones’ arm, being wheeled along with her into the short stay ward. After all, she has had the audacity to spend 3 hours, fifty nine minutes and 59 seconds taking up valuable space in the Accident and Emergency department. Every second counts in the new patient-centred NHS. Or even if it doesn’t – Big Brother is there to count it nonetheless.