What can you learn from the vehicles your patients (and colleagues) drive?
A wander through the practice carpark can tell you a lot about your patients.
1. Holden Commodore SV6
The driver of this beauty abuses steroids and has had more growth hormone and creatine than you’ve had hot dinners. They also run a plumbing and an airconditioning business, they’ve got a left ventricular wall thicker than your thigh and are probably called Brodie.
Based on their car they’ll be wanting an ADHD diagnosis and some dex.
2. Merecedes-Benz CLE Cabriolet
The practice rents out a room to a visiting dermatologist and this car demonstrates the confidence to spend big. It’s all vegan leather, professional valets, social signalling and smooth acceleration to the coppery sunrise of an optimistic future. No one is allowed to say the word cheeseburger in this car let alone eat one!
3. Volvo station wagon
Everything inside this 80s time machine is covered in grey wool, including the fluffy dice. The seats, the steering wheel, the handbrake, even the dashboard. It’s like hitching a lift inside a giant kangaroo pouch. There’s even a CD player with an Adriano Celentano album stuck inside it.
This COPD granny has a mobile oxygen tank in the back, will have her grandkids in tow and is probably coming in about her troublesome cough again.
4. Subaru WRX
Nothing says “prick” quite like a Subaru, but this one has spelled it out for you with the licence plate BRO 69. Whoever drives this is the living embodiment of JG Ballard’s Crash: they’re all testicles and revving engines and would gladly run over a pile of school children if it meant getting to the lights quicker than you. Breakfast was a quantity of meth that makes Hunter S Thompson’s daily routine look like tea and scones.
5. VW Kombivan
The dreamcatcher hanging off the rearview mirror and the surfing stickers on the sun-bleached body work say it all. There’s even a bed in the back and it sure isn’t for sleeping. What we’re looking at here is a barn door case of BPD and chlamydia. And no, I don’t prescribe cannabis.
6. Motorhome
This obsessive retired couple love looking at fuel gauges and pressure hoses, nozzles and tubing. They’re all about the fold-out chairs, water purifiers and the organised life on the road. They want metrics, they want their cholesterol, PSA and ferritin levels checked and they want to know exactly how long they have left to live. Don’t expect a long consultation, they have to be 500km away by noon.
7. Crappy Kia Sportage
This family workhorse hasn’t been washed in at least six months, has clocked up 130,000 kilometres and is full of sand, weird sticky stuff, cheeseburger wrappers, Adelaide Fringe flyers and a collection of rotting starfish.
If you look under the driver’s seat you’ll find a half-eaten banana that’s been there so long it’s grown fur. This car belongs to you and like you it’s shamefully reliable.
