Smoking and GUM

As many people would probably be willing to bear out, I’m not the world’s most tactful person.  Possibly a terrier with a rat is a better description. So the provision of public health advice and education whilst on board ship has been a tricky subject. In every workplace I’ve seen co-workers smoking or struggling with weight issues, but not only did I not live with those people, I wasn’t their doctor.

I try to be aware that there is a fine line to walk between actively promoting good health and simply being annoying. People are very accepting of my sobriety whilst at the bar (I am going to be such a light weight in Stanley!) but I imagine that might change if they were worried that their alcohol consumption was being watched or their “fresh air” breaks were being totted up. It’s important to switch the doctor brain off at these times; people who don’t want to stop smoking aren’t going to simply because I harass them in the bar.

The bar on the James Clark Ross

 

 

A darts board on a ship feels like the definition of optimism

I’ve also learned to recognise the “buts”. The people who button-hole me in the bar to inform me that they really would engage with smoking cessation or some other change, “but”... When I’ve provided the tenth solution in a row to someone who is telling me that they “would have stopped smoking but...” I realise that they aren’t really looking for assistance with smoking cessation; they’re looking for absolution. Does that sound horribly unsympathetic? It’s not meant to; it’s simply that I can’t force someone to change if they don’t actually want to.

Imagine, therefore, my deep and unreasoning joy when some poor beggar unwittingly released the full force of the Helen-educational-urge upon himself. All he said was that he understood that lungs repaired themselves fully if you stopped smoking by a certain age and I was away. I was drawing graphs, waving my hands in the air, the scent of a convert in my nostrils. He egged me on; there’s no other way to describe it. We passed swiftly from the benefits of smoking cessation to discussion of the two-hit hypothesis in cancer generation. From there we spent a brief but enthralling interlude with blood transfusions before moving on, I know not how, to the lush fields of sexual health.

Sexual health education is a personal pet peeve. It is such an incredibly vulnerable area of people’s lives and has the potential to make people deeply unhappy. It follows therefore that when I have the opportunity to disseminate (pun intended) information about sexual health, I seize it with both hands (stop giggling at the back). I waxed lyrical about the various different conditions and their symptoms. I expounded on contraception. Finally I explained that for good sexual health, it is highly advisable to visit a GUM clinic between sexual partners. And then I turned around and found the senior officer gazing at me with an expression of utter bemusement, no doubt wondering why on earth I had turned the bridge into a sexual health lecture theatre. Ah...I’ll just be...that is to say...heading downstairs then...sorry Boss.