Doctors arrive here and do not think of their name for a few years. There is no reason to. The work comes through the hospital and the clinic stays busy.
Then they make a move. Private practice, or a specialty where the patient gets to choose their doctor.
So they go looking. It turns into a strange afternoon.
The best explanation they ever gave of their own work sits in four articles on a directory site. Somebody there booked an hour, asked them questions, wrote it up, and put it on their domain under their logo.
A radio interview they did three years ago, an interview they don’t remember.
The hospital page is well written too, but it belongs to the hospital.
They also find themselves in listicles. Top 5 surgeons in Dubai. Top 8 GPs in Greater Manchester. Their name sitting next to other doctors on a site they have never heard of.
That is what they find in the long, strange afternoon. Their own site, if they have one, has a CV on it.
Nothing was taken. They said yes each time. They were saying yes to the hour, and the hour is the thing worth having.
Everything a doctor knows that a page cannot fake comes out in the first forty minutes of a real conversation. It never comes out on a form. The asking is half of it. Knowing which answer was the real one is the other half.
The directories ask. The hospitals ask. Then they keep what comes out.
Nobody ever booked that hour for them.