Hard chairs

I take a cushion with me when I visit the doctor. It is placed on the very hard plastic seat I now have to sit on. There are no arms to the new type of chair, the frame of which is metal. Without anything to ease myself down on to the seat or push myself up when leaving I have great difficulty as my knee and other joints are in a bad state and painful.

My own doctor and other GPs are opposed to the introduction of this type of chair. The reason for the change is hygiene — as cited by the health centre manager. I don’t know why she would wish older, or any other disabled people, to experience this quite unnecessary pain and difficulty when for many, many decades a plain, two-armed chair has not been an extra hazard. Most chairs in the waiting room are now without arms and disliked by patients in general. Welded together, it brings people that much closer.

I feel this quest for hygiene is being taken out of all proportion and yet piles of magazines are available for anyone to leaf through. Surely they carry germs and in any case, germs can be airborne.

My uncle, a doctor in the regular army since WWI, and back from being a POW in Thailand after WWII, was astounded at the introduction of everything being sterilised for babies. (He was happy to see his first baby daughter playing with coal in the then usual coal bucket). His comment was ‘People will not have natural immunity to anything soon’. He was CMO, Southern Command, Wilton, at the time of his tragic death.

I would be interested to know where this ‘patient’s chair’ directive came from. I understand they are quite expensive.

• © British Journal of General Practice 2013