Julie Draper

@doctorwibble @drbruceashford It needs a full stop at the end 😉

@drbruceashford “No” is a complete sentence, Bruce.

I’ve got a new t-shirt.

@bhx_official what a sh*tshow. I arrived at the airport more than 3 hours ahead of my flight…and I still had to get pulled out of the security queue to get through in time to board my flight. No comms from your staff, nothing online indicating the extent of the queues, no aircon

General Dame Sharon Nesmith is to be appointed the new Vice Chief of the Defence Staff with effect from June 2024. Defence Secretary @GrantShapps & Chief of the Defence Staff @AdmTonyRadakin_ congratulated Dame Sharon on her appointment. Find out more: ow.ly/8az750RJtY3

@jenny_burbage @Emily_Paines @Sam_Blacker Excellent news! Well done @Emily_Paines 🥰

So proud to celebrate with @Emily_Paines today after she smashed her PhD viva 👩🏼‍🎓🥂👏🏻 so deserved after all that hard work, thank you @Sam_Blacker and Jo W-Scurr for an excellent viva…a pleasure to have as my student, looking forward to seeing what the future holds! #Dr #PhD

Disappointing customer service from @Arcteryx where the computer doesn’t seem to have an answer other than no. Realising the protracted delivery time means my order won’t arrive before I leave Canada, I asked to cancel it, then to change the delivery address. Answer to both: no

@Roddy_Neilson I don’t know…but I’ve learnt a new word 😊

Can somebody tell me why so many pulchritudinous Asiatic young ladies find my posts on UK medical practice so fascinating that they wish to be my friend? I’ve asked my online Nigerian Prince friend who’s managing my finances but he’s not got back to me.

Made me laugh too…although my kids didn’t quite get it 😆

Had to see it for myself. This actually happened at the Pentagon briefing yesterday. It is real. It really happened. Thank you @JSchogol73030

In case you've hit your head, here's a reminder on how to make a proper cup of tea. Hope this helps! ☕️

@naomicfisher Encouraging them to come to school regardless of illness in order to get an award will only serve to cement presenteeism in our future workforce.

Today I heard from a parent that their son was terribly upset when he got covid, because it would ruin his 100% attendance record. At the end of the year, those with 100% get book tokens & certificates in assembly. She mentioned it in passing, she obviously didn’t think it was a big deal. It was just how school worked, and last year her son had got the award. Here’s why policies like that should stop. What’s the problem, you might think, with rewarding those who turn up day after day? Surely it’s just a nice little treat to recognise their commitment? And book tokens! How worthy. What’s the problem with free books for kids who take school seriously enough to make it in every day? As with all reward systems, however, we don’t think enough about those who don’t get the reward and the effect on them. Who are these kids? Well, it’s the children with serious illness - the mum then went on to tell me that one girl in his class has leukaemia, for example. Or the disabled child. Or the child with overwhelming anxiety. Or the child who became homeless with their mum due to domestic violence and has to go to the shelter in the night, and then doesn’t make it to school the next day. Or even the child whose dad died and who had a day off to attend the funeral. It’s the kids who find school most difficult and who have the most challenges who struggle to attend. What happens to them when everyone else goes up to get their book tokens? They sit in assembly watching, and they are punished. They are punished because the absence of a reward acts as a punishment for them. It’s a public punishment too, everyone knows that they didn’t make the grade. No free books for them. Tough. Whenever there are rewards, the flip side is punishment. When we reward one person, the others are punished by the absence. When we reward someone one year, and then not the next, that again the absence acts as a punishment. It makes them feel bad. Of course, we know this. We know that children feel bad when they don’t get something and others do. This is in fact pretty well how rewards are meant to work. They are meant to motivate. The idea is that children will try harder to get the reward. So what’s the problem? The problem is that 100% attendance isn’t about trying harder. It’s largely about luck, particularly at primary school. Luck not to get ill, luck to have a stable family, luck to be the kind of person who doesn’t find school overwhelmingly stressful. Luck to be the sort of person for whom life is a bit easier, in fact. Rewards for 100% attendance reward the lucky, and by doing so punish the unlucky. The lucky feel good and the unlucky feel bad. And that has other consequences. Because making those who find school attendance hard feel bad is very unlikely to make them more able to attend. They are already struggling, and now they’re being punished for it. It contributes to anxiety, because children are aware of the consequences of not getting 100%, and some of them will become really anxious about it. For others, it will contribute to their anger and their feelings that they aren’t valued as much as others. So yes, the proud children up the front of assembly can’t see a problem, and their parents think it’s ‘just a nice gesture’, but it’s so easy to ignore the effect on the least advantaged. We celebrate the winners and the losers are invisible, shamed into silence. The winners assume that the losers deserved to lose - they say that they worked hard for their awards, and the losers couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and so why should they get book tokens? This happens again and again in our education system, and that’s why I keep on banging this drum. Every intervention should be evaluated for its impact on losers as well as winners. It’s not enough to pretend they could all be winners if they just tried hard enough. Sometimes people tell me that the attendance awards helped them learn that everyone is good at different things, because whilst they didn’t get attendance awards, they did well at other things and got awards for music or creative writing. Which is nice for them, but again, let’s think about the losers. For it’s not true that in a school context everyone is good at something. It’s not true that everyone gets awards somewhere. Some children learn that they aren’t good at anything. Not even turning up. These reward systems come up often when I talk to young people who are disillusioned and burnt out by school. The significance of book tokens goes beyond the money. That’s why it doesn’t work when parents say they’ll buy the book tokens instead, to try and lessen the pain of not getting the reward. Those book tokens, awarded in public in assembly, signify approval, status, validation - and to those who don’t get them, they signify the opposite

@timricketts_ @Lageraemia It was one of my favourite things to do when I was an SHO in ENT 😊 (admittedly that was a long time ago…)

@Lageraemia It does look fun, kind of makes me wish I had an ENT job

Why isn’t ear micro suction funded by the NHS? A 15 minute intervention that can reverse deafness for relatively low cost (when compared to some of our treatments). I haven’t seen data but the number needed to treat must be almost 1… The best money I’ve ever spent

@VodafoneUK who do I speak to to complain about the process for moving house? Apparently you can only text a security code to a mobile broadband number rather to my actual contact telephone number (as listed on my account). Feeling pretty grumpy, and inclined to leave Vodafone

One of the favourite parts of my job is the interactions I have with the DSTL teams. A great bunch of people to work with, and they can throw some shapes on the dance floor too! 😉

I’ve been really struggling to articulate my thoughts on Israel/Palestine, and I think Patrick Kielty says it better than I could. No-one wins as things stand. This is for all those who hope for peace.

@Roddy_Neilson Your advice and guidance on all matters haematology has always been gratefully received! Thank you for your service and best wishes for the next chapter.

So this arrived today! I shall now be telling tales of military derring-do at great length and incoherence to anyone that will listen. No change from when I was actually serving then…

We were delighted to share our latest research in 5 oral and 5 poster presentations across the conference program. Thanks to the organisers @ICSPP2023 for the opportunity and for putting together such a great conference

@Microbedoc2 There are worse ways to start the weekend! 🍾

So this Tues it finally happened. A knock on the door at 630am, I clamber from bed confused and wondering who the fuck it could be. I open the door to find a Sainsbury's delivery man holding a crate with a sole bottle of Bollinger. An order I had created with the sole intention

@NImuirsy @PinnacleSF This is my biggest worry about my impending march-out, especially having marched in under their predecessor…

We are hosting a free to attend symposium on occupational performance @chiuni on 07Sep23. This is the week before @ICSPP2023 . If you are travelling to the UK hopefully you can also fit a trip to the south coast into your plans. Register interest here forms.office.com/pages/response…

@RAdmJudeTerry @SrgCdreMarshall @RNJobsUK @RN_MSOfficer @DMS_MilMed Amazing news! Congratulations @SrgCdreMarshall 🥂

And then there were 2!! Congrats to my #Amazing friend and colleague @SrgCdreMarshall on becoming Surgeon Rear Admiral today. #Proud to have known you for nearly 25 years. @RNJobsUK @RN_MSOfficer @DMS_MilMed