When I first started this job, one piece of advice I was often given was to keep conversation with patients to a minimum. It's a piece of advice I've grown to ignore. Screeners generally have a very limited amount of time with each patient, and it's true that no clinic would ever run to time if we asked everyone where they're going for their holidays, but the fact remains that the conversations I have with my patients are frequently the highlight of my day.

So whilst a lot of screeners believe that to ask anything more than the most essential questions is to open the nightmarish door to an eternally late-running clinic and a lot of unpaid overtime, I've learnt to chatter away to my patients as I get on with the job, ensuring that they get a friendly service, I get an entertaining few minutes, and we both get away on time.

The stories I hear as a result are what keeps the job interesting for me. Take today, for example. I was stuck for eight hours in a remote clinic in the middle of nowhere, with no internet access and a failing mobile signal. But rather than feeling isolated and lonely, I've actually had a very entertaining day. This morning I chatted to a man with chronically poor diabetic control, which has previously resulted in referable retinopathy, whose life has been turned around by a quad bike accident last summer. Having broken his collarbone, fractured his ribs, and generally ended up like the six million dollar man on a budget, he's spent so long being cared for in hospital that his sugar levels are back to normal for the first time in years.

But when it came to the award for Anecdote of the Day, that chap was blown out of the water by my very next patient: a lady in her seventies who was blind in one eye. Her notes said she'd been that way since childhood, so I decided to ask her about it. And I'm glad I did. The details made a quad bike accident sound tame in comparison.

Picture the scene. It's the 1930s. My patient's mother is heavily pregnant, and her father arranges for a local doctor to deliver the baby at home. The mother duly goes into labour one evening, and the doctor is called. He arrives soon afterwards, but is, as my patient put it, "as pickled as a newt" (at least I think she said pickled). With no alternative help on offer, the parents-to-be allow the man to take charge, but it soon becomes apparent that there's a problem, and the baby will have to be delivered using forceps.

The doctor seems to struggle with his equipment (and his sobriety), but the baby eventually emerges... with a prong of the forceps buried deep into one eye. In the 21st century, that would have resulted in a multi-million pound medical negligence case and a lot of media attention. In the 1930s, people just got on with their lives. Every week for the next ten years, my patient saw various eye specialists, but all to no avail. No sight was ever restored to that eye. Until, that is, she was ten years old...

As a small child, she'd seen a brilliant young eye surgeon who'd subsequently gone to America to carry out research and develop new techniques. On his return, he contacted my patient's father and said that he may be able to help her, but that he would have to charge for the treatment. The money was duly raised, an operation was carried out, and when the bandages were removed, a minor miracle had taken place. My patient could see with both eyes for the first time in her life. She described it to me as a miraculous experience, and spoke in gushing terms of how wonderful it was to see the world with two eyes.

Six weeks later, on the day of her eleven-plus exam, she awoke to darkness. The surgery had failed, nothing could be done, and sixty years on, her vision in that eye has never returned. It was an incredible, heartbreaking story. And one I'd never have heard if I'd just asked for her GP, address and date of birth.