• consultant medical microbiologists
• time management
• infection control
• prioritisation

All doctors complain about their workload. In particular, the growing non-clinical component is seen not only to distance us from our “real job” but also to draw us into that miserable vortex of irrelevant targets proscribed by faceless bureaucrats, to be achieved with ever diminishing resources. Sound familiar? But is it true? Or is some of this self inflicted? Are we our own worst enemies? The interesting article by Riordan and colleagues¹ deals with these issues.

Microbiologists have certainly as much, if not more, reason to complain than most. Various government initiatives have expanded, permanently or temporarily, clinical services, especially surgery, but without concomitant microbiological expansion. Lord Moynihan had it right when he aphorised that “every surgical incision is an adventure in bacteriology”. Like foreign holidays, many of these adventures have had unintended microbiological complications. Added to these the government’s …