Vice UK

Cough hands

When you cough or sneeze you think you're right to cover your mouth with your hand. That's how mummy taught you. Well, that know-it-all bitch couldn't have been more wrong. Cough hands will have a big hand in the destruction of the species.

Coughing and sneezing into your hands = Gob germs on hands + touching surfaces + shaking hands + hands opening doors + hands holding on to the tube rail = global pandemic.

Coughing/sneezing into your elbow is the only way to save the planet, according to new public health directives. Doing it into elbow fabric will spread less communicable diseases than doing it into hands. Doctors want to make it the new cold etiquette, the new flu fashion. So c'mon kids, be cool when you've got a cold - start throwin' 'bows.

Scandinavia – Last Night at the ER

I recently had to get an emergency CAT scan because of some utterly boring condition I've had my whole life. I got talking to my doctor. He was really nice and a lot more blunt than I thought they were allowed to be.

Vice: So, do you have any stories?
Dr: Sure. There was this one time when the police dropped off a guy with a gunshot wound in his calf. Half an hour later the guy who had shot him arrived as well – the so-called hit man...

LONDON - OCCUPATION/ETHNICITY

Hospital receptionist Sally Slackarse writes: "There are questions I'm obliged to ask patients when they register. Questions about occupation and ethnicity are the most revealing. Sometimes it's just irritating, like when I'm asking the guy wearing the fluorescent fireman's uniform what he does for a living. Sometimes it's downright annoying, like when the ethnic query triggers the 40-year-old Rasta with cannabis psychosis to rage against 'white man's Babylon'. But it's these questions that usually tell me the most about people, and after a while you see patterns emerging. For instance, if you have told me you're Latin American, you may very well go on to tell me you are a 'domestic'. If you're a Caucasian male booking in with cocaine-induced chest pain, you're probably a 'graphic designer'..."

LONDON - FEMALE EJACULATION EXPERIMENT

WANTED: Volunteers for research into female ejaculation. £100.
VICE's Healthcare correspondent Sally Slackarse writes: "I saw this ad on the hospital intranet. I quickly signed up cus I was broke and I was looking forward to a kinky, Kinsey-like experiment where I'd watch porn and wank in front of some doctors. That didn't happen. My guinea-piggery wasn't as bad as the volunteers whose heads exploded at Northwick Park Hospital last month. But it wasn't a painless experience either..."

LONDON - A&E PATIENTS MAKE ME SICK

After our hospital horror story last week, a real life A&E receptionist absolutely bollocked us. Her rage was so hateful and educational and funny, we think she should run the National Health Service. In the meantime, she's gonna write a weekly column. Week 1:
An Insider's Guide to Surviving A & E
Helpful hints for victims of date-rape, car crashes, muggings, disease, drugs & hospital vending machines...

LONDON: GOOD FRIDAY AT HOMERTON HOSPITAL

Okay, I know NHS workers don't get exactly paid football players' wages but we were in Homerton Hospital, East London, this morning with a suspected broken rib and there must have been about six other patients in the place. There was a middle-aged lady who'd been beaten up by her pimp and was giving a big crack-addled speech about what happenened to her in a wailing broken English / Albanian drawl. Her face looked like somebody had battered it with a hot iron.