The real life drama of a family doctor’s daily casebook

There’s not much that surprises Rosemary Leonard these days.

During her time as a GP, she’s delivered a baby to an unsuspecting teenage mother in her surgery, tackled an octogenarian nymphomaniac and treated an eco-protester with appendicitis.

But one of the most frightening events was being held captive by a man while on a house call.

Dr Leonard, who is the resident doctor at BBC Breakfast, had been called to a council flat to see a seven-year-old girl with a cold and slight temperature. On arrival the girl’s aggressive father demanded a paediatrician. Despite explaining that paediatricians don’t do home visits, the father would not be appeased.

“My offer of a fast ambulance fell on deaf ears. This man wasn’t letting me go anywhere and, to ram the point home, he bolted the bedroom door.”

Now trapped in the room with the girl and her terrified mother, Dr Leonard spotted her chance of escape and jumped through the bedroom window onto the grass and ran to her car. The father was arrested and charged with unlawful imprisonment, for which he received a 12-month jail sentence.

But it wasn’t the first time the doctor had been threatened.

“Someone once thumped me in the tummy when I was pregnant. The patient was angry,” she shrugs.“With all GPs the thing that scares us is violence. Only last week I had a drug-crazed patient screaming and shouting at me. That was really scary.”

Some of Dr Leonard’s more unusual cases are introduced in her latest book, Doctor, Doctor: Incredible True Tales from a GP’s Surgery. They include the tale of a lonely ex-coal miner with a chronic chest condition and a heartbreaking story about a mother’s refusal to let her child have the MMR vaccination.

The doctor, who has presented TV series for the BBC, Sky and Living, has treated thousands of patients over the years but when her own son William, then aged six, was ill, she failed to notice.

“William had a cough for about a month and I said, ‘You’ve just got a cough, you’re not ill. It was an appalling wake-up call when he came in unable to breathe. He was obviously having an asthma attack. I felt mortified that I could have been so negligent.”

She says she often felt she should have spent more time with her two sons, admitting: “Getting the balance right is every working mother’s guilt trip.”

Nowadays she works three days a week at her south London surgery and the rest of the time is spent writing or doing media work.

“Patients are much more demanding, although we are always trying to be there as family doctors,” says Dr Leonard. “Twenty-five years ago we were less accessible than we are now. Now they want results straight away and aren’t prepared to wait.

“Far more patients are less respectful than they used to be. They can be angry, demanding and rude. Some people have unrealistic expectations, when the average GP is trying to look after 1,500 people. Often those who are the least sick are the most demanding.”

GPs are expected to be a cure-all, she maintains. “I still say to people, ‘If I had a cure for the common cold, I wouldn’t be sitting in this surgery, I’d be a millionaire.’”

The internet has meant more patient awareness but also more fear, she says. “People do Google their symptoms. Whenever they do that, they latch on to the most serious diagnosis. The internet doesn’t tell you the most likely diagnosis – for that you need your GP.”

She believes the increasing number of TV medical programmes – both fiction and non-fiction – have gone some way towards raising awareness of a number of health issues.

“But to make good drama you’ve got to have the unusual. A lot of my book is the unusual and it’s true that real life can be stranger than fiction – like the story of one young Bangladeshi girl and her husband who was trying to get her pregnant through her tummy button.”

Dr Leonard tries to be a good patient – although she confesses that her routine smear and mammogram are overdue. Her no-nonsense approach has served her well.

“You do have to be tough. I find it easier to be tough now that I’m older. As a young doctor to turn round and say ‘I don’t know’ can be quite difficult because a patient might think, ‘She’s no good, she hasn’t done enough training.’ But now, I say, ‘I haven’t got a clue but I will try to find out’, and patients respect me.”

Doctor, Doctor by Dr Rosemary Leonard is published by Headline, £12.99. To order call 01748 821122. Postage costs £2.85.