THE life of a doctor is rarely boring — the medical conundrums and ethical dilemmas are numerous and often bizarre.

Have you, for instance, ever wondered what to do with a psychiatric patient fast asleep in your bed, or an unidentified corpse in front of a Devon cowshed when the herd is due in for milking?

How do you set about sorting 50 sets of dentures which have mysteriously become mixed up in the oven at a nursing home? How should you deal with a drug runner rescued from the Caribbean sea when he pulls a gun on you? And just how would you feel if one of your patients was abducted by aliens?

Dr Michael Sparrow from Lifton has discovered the answers to these thorny questions through personal experience.

The doctor has just published 'Country Doctor: Tales of a Rural GP', featuring a number of blackly humourous yet true accounts of his daily rounds as a West Devon doctor.

Along the way to medical success, Dr Sparrow has amassed a collection of the humourous, bizarre, macabre and tragic incidents he has encountered.

From the delivery of a baby when under the influence, to the unusual whereabouts of a jar of English mustard, the book is the story of a rural GP's attempts to make sense of the career he has unwittingly found himself in.

Dr Sparrow has been based at Lifton surgery for more than 13 years, but his transformation into an author took even him by surprise.

He wrote many of the stories at the time they happened, but the idea for a book came more recently.

'I started about three years ago, writing an article for a medical magazine, but it was just too long, there was enough for one chapter of a book and it grew from that,' he said.

Another impetus for the book was to record some of the stories for his children.

Dr Sparrow said protecting the identity of the patients featured in his anecdotes was a challenge, but he was now convinced no-one would recognise their friends or neighbours.

'You have to change as much as you can, until you are happy that no-one will recognise anyone else,' he said.

But the desire among people living in Lifton to see if they could identify the people in the locally-based stories has been a major selling point for the book.

'People like the fact it could be about someone they know,' he conceded.

Dr Sparrow said having worked in the practice for so long, he felt he could now publish these stories, but he had to settle in fully and let people become used to his idiosyncrasies before feeling confident that the book would be well-received.

Dr Sparrow said that the book did not seem to have made patients reticent to talk about their conditions, for fear of appearing in the next book.

Rather, there was a great interest in the stories among patients visiting the surgery.

'People do say, was that all really true? Mostly it was, apart from where I have had to make changes to protect people,' he said.

Dr Sparrow has already written a second edition of the book and is close to finishing a third.

However, there are some stories that are never likely to be published because the details are too sensitive.

'There are a lot of stories I can't write because people would recognise themselves,' he said.

Dr Sparrow said he felt it was important for a doctor to be able to do more than diagnose conditions and absorb medical textbooks.

Doctors had to be able to relate to patients and their worries.

The book's introduction includes advice for those thinking about entering the profession in the form of 12 commandments for a prospective GP.

Among the dozen rules are such nuggets as: 'Purchase the most uncomfortable bed on the market. That way, you will never mind leaving it on a cold winter's morning.'

Dr Sparrow said the book, which came out a fortnight ago, has already gone on sale at the surgery in Lifton, where patients have been snapping up copies.

'Everybody who has read it has been very favourable, people have been lapping it up,' he added.

Dr Sparrow said the publishers had sent the book out to other doctors and the feedback from his peers had also been positive.

He said he had been surprised and pleased by the success of the book.

He has also been enjoying his turn in the media spotlight, having completed 25 radio interviews a fortnight ago to promote the book.

Indeed, it has been a busy couple of months for the doctor with a new seven-week old baby at home as well.

Dr Sparrow says he passionately believes in the importance of the concept of the 'family doctor', a role which is disappearing from modern medicine.

'Country Doctor: Tales of a Rural GP' charts the doctor's somewhat unconventional course from the immaturity and uncertainty of life as a medical student, through hospital jobs and a six-year spell in the Royal Air Force, before moving to Lifton.

l 'Country Doctor: Tales of a Rural GP' by Dr Michael Sparrow is published by Robinson in paperback and costs £7.99.