Patients Please!

 

Breaking news! During last night's Gas Spanner, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-gas-spanner-programme-133.html, somebody in the chatbox made me aware of something extraordinary. There is now a computer game based on hospital portering. I didn't believe him until I looked myself. The game is called Patients Please! and is a hospital portering simulator. It is for one to four players and the object of the game is to "satisfy each of the ridiculous hospital requirements, please the patients and make as much money as possible". It is being developed by a Scottish company called Damage State and appears to be out for crowdfunding. There is no need to ask whether or not I would donate! Source: https://ukgamesfund.com/funded-project/patients-please. The page doesn't give much information except a basic play description and the statement that it is a work in progress. The fund may have closed or has not yet opened; it's far from clear. I will naturally offer them my services as a consultant like I already have done for Hollywood, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2013/08/portering-hits-hollywood.html. That's all the information I can locate right now. I'll post an update as soon as I have more. Obviously I will be a very keen player and promoter of this game when it becomes available.

"Whatever!"

 

I've talked before about how my experiences in hospital portering have left me with a strange aversion to certain harmless words and phrases, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/how-dare-you.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/well-take-it-from-here.html. Another of those is: "Whatever!" This was said to me by the evil-eyed Canadian person I mention in the background links. I can't recall the situation, but it was during the first few years of my service when I was in Delivery Suite. I was making this midwife aware of a serious situation in which an important tissue specimen had been thrown in the rubbish by mistake. It wasn't even thrown by her; it was an error made by her midwifery colleague. She waved her hand dismissively and growled: "Whatever, Ben!", as if annoyed that a porter had spotted a mistake made by a midwife, a superior one. A few weeks later it happened again; but this time it was much worse. An entire placenta had been discarded when they're supposed to put into a special container which I would take to a storage freezer. This time Stacey said in the same manner: "That's fine, Ben!"; and I feel the same repulsion at those words too. It says a lot about the NHS to know that this midwife ended up as a top Department of Health official. For all I know she is still there to this day; she is only a few years older than me and probably has yet to retire. A while ago I thought a time would eventually come when I would be able to put the trauma of my HPing life behind me. It is now obvious that this is not going to happen. I am never going to get over it. I will never be able to let go of the humiliation I suffered during those twenty-three years. I have been studying the publications of other people with experiences similar to my own, albeit in the civilian world, and I think the only option when you cannot overcome a painful memory is to perform a trick of spiritual alchemy, which is a phrase one of these people used. It's like being shot with a depleted uranium bullet which you cannot remove. It will sit there forever inside your body, poisoning your system. However, there is something you can do. Rather than trying over and over in vain to extract the bullet; find something that will transform that bullet into gold. Performing that miracle for myself and all readers is one of the prime objectives of the HPWA.

Power Handshakes

 

In my quest to educate My Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Hospital Porters, along with anybody else who is interested, about Dignity Statements, I must once again remind you that the problems for which DigStates were invented are not always about what people say, but also what they do; and therefore so are the responses. There is a certain person I often bump into at events relevant to the other sub-franchises of HPANWO who seems to have a very high opinion of himself mixed with a very low opinion of me. Whenever I meet him he tries to give me a power handshake. This is a gesture that projects dominance over the person whose hand you're shaking. I remember many years ago, in my pre-portering teenage life, reading a book about body language that addressed this subject so even before I developed DigStates I was somewhat prepared for them. It's his way of saying: "I'm the Mr Bigshot here and you're my bitch." Luckily I got to know him many years after I utilized my disarming procedure and so he never got away with it against me, nor did anybody else. If you've had this experience then in your case it may be some arrogant consultant or, more likely for a HP, your head porter or somebody else in admin. This article here describes the situation very well and it actually repeats a lot of information that was in the book, see: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-out-of-a-dominating-handshake-2012-9. I have used this technique against the aforementioned consultants and managers, but I developed my own adaptations that are bit more extreme. In the case of my self-aggrandized woo-woo contact I do the same left-foot-forward ploy and coming at him with my palm pointed downwards, but I literally advance my hand from much higher, almost shoulder height, and bring it down on top of his; and I raise myself up, even standing slightly on my toes. This is a form of Dignity Statement that is as important as all the others. Serving with somebody every day, you'll probably got only one chance to use it with each person, when you first meet them, so it is vital to get the methodology right in advance and be prepared at all times. As you learn and grow in your HPing career you will no doubt adapt new tricks in your own way based on your personal experience. Please do post a comment and let me know what they are.