Friday, December 14, 2007

Dr Crippen "not dead" shock

Over the past couple of years, one of the best and most informative blogs around has been NHS Blog Doctor, written by an anonymous GP who styled himself Dr John Crippen.

Unfortunately Dr Crippen had a long break over the summer and has not posted anything since October 17, which was understandably the cause of some perplexity among his regular readers.

Earlier this week, someone purporting to be a colleague at his workplace left the following comment:

I am a senior partner at 'John's practice, I have only become aware of this 'weblog' after accessing his email account through our internal system. Other partners have read this website, but none of us knew who the author was - although in retrospect there are a number of clues we could have picked up on!

There is no easy way to say this, but the doctor known as 'John' or 'Crippen' passed away in a road traffic accident mid-October. Although I appreciate the esteem in which many of you obviously held him, I must ask that the emails cease as of now - they are all redirected to our mail server and this is causing some difficulty.

Dr. Crippen's identity may no longer need to be secret for his own purposes, but out of respect for his family and remaining colleagues I shall not be sharing this here, neither will I post another message or reply to any left. This webblog will be removed once I can circumnavigate the security protocols for obvious reasons of confidentiality.

This said, I thank all who visit here for their support of our dear, and much missed colleague.

Kind regards, Dr.P.

I thought this comment was exceedingly odd, not least because the bit about deleting the blog and "circumnavigating security protocols" sounded more like the work of a censorious saboteur than someone genuinely concerned to protect "confidentaility."

Subsequent investigations by myself and a number of other bloggers revealed there had been no road accidents reported anywhere in the UK between 17-31 October involving the death of any GPs.

The esteemed swearblogger Devil's Kitchen now claims to have proof that Dr Crippen is not dead, just that he has had enough of blogging for the time being.

If that is so then I'm glad he's still with us - but if he has indeed given up blogging it's a sad loss to the 'sphere.

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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Damn, you got me. I knew I should have used a less easily investigated 'cause of death' but equally hoped to generate as much 'internets dorama' as possible, and in this I would, as far as my RSS reader suggests, have been successful. My reasons for this sick bit of fun are at least threefold. Firstly, I am a troll. Pure and simple. If you are not familiar with the behaviour of trolls I suggest consulting encyclopediadramatica.com or the overated /b/ on 4chan. Secondly, I had hoped to force the good doctor to issue some form of rebuttal but it seems he is not yet breaking radio silence. Thirdly, I have crossed swords with the guy many times through his blog due to his supreme arrogance towards the many of us out there who do not hold, or want to hold, the title of 'doctor', yet do a generally good job of holding the NHS together. Better still, I am a nurse - some of us can even use computers these days 'John' (although we of couse have to make way when some preteen SHO needs to check her facebook). Many of us enjoy gaining new skills and expertise for the sake of our patients, not because we are hopeless wannabes to stupid to get in to medical school - you would not want to know what the nurses you 'keep in their place' think about you behind your back. And please, remove your rings and watches, leave your tie at home and roll up your sleeves, you supercilious bastards, you make the rest of us look bad.

So, there you go. Blogger death hoax perpetrated by bitter resentful nurse shock. Nurse with a good proxy, btw. If you wonder why I did it, ask yourself how much time you wasted 'investigating' if a fictional doctor who dropped all his 'fans' with out bothering to say goodbye (or even "fuck off") had died or not. Win for me, I think.

And I chose you to tell, Mr. Linford, because I found your blog at random and it seemed as good a place as any. I have an extreme case of unwarranted self-importance and the attention focused on my 'act' causes my e-penis to grow by the post. Feed the troll or starve him to death - you decide.

To anyone pointing out what a callous bastard I am, please remeber this is the internets, we are not talking about real people - I have not hurt Dr.Crippen's friends and family because they do not know who he (or she) is. All I have (hopefully) done is pissed off a bunch of people who take the web way too seriously. If anyone can be bothered to flame me (and again this is YOUR choice Paul - do you repost this to a blog someone actually reads, or just delete it?) remember THAT IS WHAT I WANT!

Merry Christmas everyone xxx

Surreptitious Evil said...

Seems to justify some of the good Doctor's rants about over-qualified and under-skilled uber-nurses, doesn't it?

From the mouths of trolls, whatever next? Sense from Polly?

Anonymous said...

You hear a lot of this kind of thing recently from nurses, there is a strange tendency for people to attack doctors and feel that they are somehow fighting some egalitarian war.

One thing I find particularly worrying is this.

Nobody used to attack doctors. Medicine is becoming an increasingly female and asian profession. Now it is under attack, from nurses, from the government, from the media.

I am a posh, white, male trainee barrister.

You don't see anyone attacking us. Not our paralegals, not the government, and not the media.

Dr Xavier Ray said...

Possibly a double hoax but Crippen did have a run-in with a nurse on his blog who he criticized for her spelling and the so-called Dr P fits the bill in this respect.

Unknown said...

Could be another hoaxer, yes. If we had the IP addresses we might know.

Anonymous said...

Oh for goodness sake people!

All this shows is that someone has claimed to be the hoaxer, claimed to be a nurse etc.

It does NOT mean nurses are attacking 'poor' doctors 'increasingly', or engaging in sexist, racist conduct, or that Crippen's fatuous comments about nurses were accurate in the first place.

Talk about putting two and two together and coming up with a hundred: especially from the legal mind- you'd think he'd know better!

Anonymous said...

What a stupid incident from start to finish. How anyone can think it's appropriate to claim that someone is dead when they are not is pretty shocking.

Rachel said...

Repellent and pathetic. From someone who is supposed to be dedicated to helping alleviate human distress as well

Anonymous said...

Yes, repellant and very pathetic. Doesn't show the so called nurse in a good light. Something lacking in his/her life methinks.

Spirit of 1976 said...

Guys! Guys! Chill out, everybody! Some idiot thinks they can get a rise out of us and pitch doctors and nurses against each other by stirring trouble on the internet. So far he/she's succeeding.

Personally I'm not going to take this person's word for it that they're a nurse - after all, on past track records, it's not as if their word has been capable of being trusted. Whether they are or not, I'm sure the overwhelming majority of nurses (myself included) would consider this kind of behaviour unacceptable.

But overall, let's remember that an internet troll is like a child having a tantrum - start yelling at them and you're giving them the attention they crave. Whoever this sad-sack is, they're best ignored.

And now, doctors and nurses, get together and hug. That's an order.

The Angry Medic said...

*hugs Zarathustra*

What the...?! How'd you make me do that? Dangit, I always was a sucker for that cool soothing mental nurse voice... :)

But I agree. Dr P is prolly starting it up for, as he/she posted on another blog, "the lulz". Well put, Z.