At the sign-out briefing at the end of our last operation today, the surgeon said the patient “can go to the toilet at any time”.
I glanced at my still slumbering patient nervously at that. Does he need to have some sort of adult nappy in place before we wake him up? But, no what the surgeon meant was that the patient was allowed to go to the toilet once he was awake. This is what used to be known as ‘toilet privileges’.
This reminds me of an old metalwork teacher of mine at school, Mr ‘three fingers’ McCeefry. He had a party trick that we liked to trigger as often as feasible: we would ask him “Can I go to the toilet, Sir?” To which he would invariably reply “I don’t know, can you?” Such are the things that amuse the bored teenage brain.