{"id":114,"date":"2016-08-12T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T16:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/?p=114"},"modified":"2017-03-31T17:31:37","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T17:31:37","slug":"top-oncologists-says-gratitude-pays-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/2016\/08\/12\/top-oncologists-says-gratitude-pays-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Top oncologist says gratitude pays off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theoldie.co.uk\/article\/try-to-make-your-doctor-like-you\">interview for the <em>Oldie<\/em> magazine<\/a>, oncologist Prof. Karol Sikora has recommended being as nice as possible to those that treat your health conditions. &#8220;If someone is particularly helpful be appreciative \u2013 everybody likes positive feedback,&#8221; he told John Sutherland. Sikora is promoting his new book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Street-Wise-Patients-Guide-Surviving-Cancer\/dp\/1911204114\">The Street-wise Patient&#8217;s Guide to Surviving Cancer<\/a><\/em> in which he advises patients to charm their doctors if they hope to persuade them that they are worth ruinously expensive cancer drugs. NHS staff are &#8220;dedicated and remarkably caring&#8221;, he said, &#8220;and they naturally respond well to pleasant patients.&#8221; His advice,though to &#8220;tell someone they have a lovely smile,&#8221; might come across as a bit obsequious though, not to mention downright creepy in some situations. Best, I think, compliment people on their actions rather than their appearance. But he&#8217;s probably right in saying, &#8220;The lower down the food chain you are the less you get thanks in the NHS \u2013 that\u2019s where the unsung heroes are to be found.&#8221; Sikora advises getting a &#8216;small gift&#8217; for the receptionist: a bunch of flowers, bottle of wine or box of chocolates. This, he says, will make all the difference in prioritising your case. &#8220;Don&#8217;t be too generous,&#8221; he says, for this will embarrass everybody.<\/p>\n<p>Sikora&#8217;s book is undoubtedly a &#8216;consumers&#8217; guide&#8217;. It characterises cancer as an &#8216;industry&#8217; and provides advice on how to maximise personal gain from a system geared to the general good. There is a fine line between genuine gratitude though and blatant bribery, and I suspect staff at all levels are able to tell the difference.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-indent: 20px;width: auto;padding: 0px 4px 0px 0px;text-align: center;font: bold 11px\/20px 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif;color: #ffffff;background: #bd081c  no-repeat scroll 3px 50% \/ 14px 14px;cursor: pointer\">Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an interview for the Oldie magazine, oncologist Prof. Karol Sikora has recommended being as nice as possible to those that treat your health conditions. &#8220;If someone is particularly helpful be appreciative \u2013 everybody likes positive feedback,&#8221; he told John Sutherland. Sikora is promoting his new book The Street-wise Patient&#8217;s Guide to Surviving Cancer in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":716,"featured_media":115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18059,21184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gifts","category-gratitude-in-the-nhs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/giskinday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}