Type Caste

PLEASE excuse any disruption to our usually impeccable service but, as part of our drive to streamline, Anorak is now being produced in India.

From today, all the letters, death threats and underwear that arrive by the sackload at our office each day will be processed by Mr Tendulkar and his crack team.

So pardon us if our staff fail to know who Jordan is and resort to looking her up in an atlas.

Be patient while Sunita baulks at the idea of anyone insulting Lisa Riley, what with the sacredness of cows in her land.

Chortle politely when you learn that in some parts of the sub-continent "Kilroy-Silk" is a colloquial term for a guru's orange robes.


Indeed, think yourself lucky that you're not ill and our team aren't typing up your case notes.

As the Mail reports ("Dear Dr, your patient's had a bolony amputation"), patients are being placed at risk because some hospitals are having medical letters to be typed in India.

Such is the shortage of secretaries willing to work for £1 a day that jobs which should be going to British drones are being sent 5,000 miles away.

And mistakes are being made. The Association Of Medial Secretaries says it has noticed some errors.

The "bolony amputation" of the Mail's headline is revealed to be a below-knee amputation. The case of "cute angina" is, naturally, acute angina.

The repeat prescription for "Lanzarote" is lansoprazole. An Eustachian tube malfunction became - all too believably - "Euston tube malfunction".

A patient with a troublesome libido, having difficulties with his erection, was being worried by his "direction".

But the pick of the bunch was the case of phlebitis to a patient's left leg which, once transcribed, became "flea bite his left leg".

But before we climb on our soap boxes and scream how wrong this all is, we should consider that the typists of India are working from tapes dictated by consultants, who speak into voice recorders.

The typing might be flawed, but what of the doctors' diction? If their voices are anything like their handwriting, we recommend a strong dose of elocution lessons all round.

Or should that say electrocution?

link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040819/144/f0owj.html