Treat others as you would like to be treated I love that section in topical news magazines -- the 'ministry of the bleeding obvious' one. The section which reports research as news, research which took years to undertake, serious money to carry out, and the outcome could have been predicted by a passing nine year old. This weeks research that shows happy patients come from practices that look after them well, or was it that practices which look after their patients well have happy patients? In any event the conclusion was that good service produces happy customers, or was it that happy customers are easy to please? Anyhow, whatever the conclusion was, it kind of seemed obvious. What does it mean in the real world? That's probably a PhD in its own right, but from the Custodes perspective it seems that we need to get smarter about making patients happier. I'm not suggesting handing out sick notes and antibiotics on demand, but simply that we expend a little effort in thinking 'does my surgery look after me like I'd want to be looked after?' Let's try being a patient, or at least taking their view, visit a friends practice, sit in their waiting room, look through their safety glass, gaze at their posters, feel their chairs dig into your shoulder blades and ask yourself the question 'does this feel like the 21st century?". Go and sit in specsavers, the vets or the local council one stop shop, ask the same