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BJGP Life

BJGP Life

The BJGP is the world-leading primary care journal. At BJGP Life we add multi-media comment and opinion for the primary care community.

Persisting, in spite of everything

The stubs of skyscrapers left over from the last air-burst remind her that there’s no going back; they’re just navigational markers now. Grass pushes up through the cracks, same as always, persisting in spite of everything.
13 February 2026
5 mins read

We need to talk about dying

"Taking dying and death out of the solely medical domain, becoming joint partners in caring for the dying patient in the broadest sense, facilitates personalised and holistic care, and creates opportunity for a more relational and compassionate interaction ..."
9 February 2026
15 mins read
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28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

In many respects, Kelson embodies the idealised GP of cultural consciousness: an easy-to-talk-to, principled eccentric... Set against the film’s graphic, meandering violence, Kelson’s permanence echoes reassuring familiarity.
7 February 2026
1 min read
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Ode to Diagnosis

Lines written by a doctor, after an elderly man presents with a positive PSA test, trying to decide what to do next. A poem.
6 February 2026
1 min read

Action required

Tired of scanning hospital letters to try and spot if there was anything that would necessitate action, it seemed like a simple solution: hospital teams would in future put any such information into a headed section...
5 February 2026
2 mins read
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Icarus Plummeting

Zigmond mercilessly describes the ways in which our healthcare systems have made us less able to listen to the patient’s experience, less able to see their experience in the context of their life, their family and their social circumstances.
31 January 2026
2 mins read

Book review: How Animals Heal Us

"How Animals Heal Us is a deeply heartfelt work from an author with lived experience of both devastating mental ill health and the restorative power of animal friendship. It contains uplifting and joyful anecdotes of animal companionship and ministration. It is also,
24 January 2026
2 mins read
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How doctors learn not to listen

Students learn that ambiguity is risky, uncertainty should be resolved, and experience must be rendered legible through diagnosis. They learn to apply the gaze, filtering out the “noise” of life to find the signal of disease.
21 January 2026
3 mins read
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Tea and two sugars

"You done the second best job you could have, James, and for that, I'm eternally grateful." ...I don't think that many would take solace from that statement above, but I did.
16 January 2026
6 mins read
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When normal tests end care too early

Medicine is remarkably effective at identifying disease. Yet when symptoms persist without a clear diagnosis, it often falters—not because knowledge is lacking, but because legitimacy quietly evaporates.
13 January 2026
3 mins read
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Monty Hall for doctors

Three doors are visible to the audience, behind one of which is a car; behind the others are two goats, presumably sedated to stop them giving themselves away...
12 January 2026
5 mins read

Every gap is an educational gap

"Recently I saw Ted and Rachel. They were living temporarily in a share house as they had recently been made homeless. Ted is a happy man despite his current circumstances, but has diabetes that is not well controlled. He takes his medication,
9 January 2026
2 mins read

Seeing double

Alongside them is another person, invisible and nameless. This is the person shaped by fear, experience, and memory; by what they have learned it is safe to say, and what it costs to say more.
8 January 2026
2 mins read

Sparking Up

A moment to spare, what else to do but spark up the screen, taking a deep breath of the hot smoke on offer.*
6 January 2026
1 min read
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The three-body problem

The physics of Cixin Liu’s alien world make it a hazardous place to live, and the consultation can sometimes also feel like a minefield of hidden agendas, competing interests, and impossible choices.
5 January 2026
5 mins read
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The machine that goes ping

But who cares? Well, it is a distraction, an overload of trivial alarm signals from a built in buffoon while I am trying to drive a car on a dark winter evening in the rain.
3 January 2026
3 mins read

Dwelling in uncertainty: the GP’s expertise

Expertise in general practice blends knowledge, skill, judgement, and relationships. It’s less about certainty than managing uncertainty with care. True expertise integrates evidence, intuition, reflection, and empathy; it develops through both formal training and the hidden curriculum. Ultimately, it’s a dynamic, lifelong
30 December 2025
3 mins read
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