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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.

Forest, my friend

We find restoration when we recognise that in the vastness of the natural world, our limitations as healthcare professionals matter not at all. This poem is for the work weary.
15 November 2026
1 min read

Book Review: No Way to Run a Country

Terry Kemple reviews No Way to Run a Country: An Outsider’s Journey into the Heart of Our Broken Politics, Johnny Mercer’s insider story of his time as an MP. The book chronicles a stormy period of British politics and Mercer’s goal to
14 November 2026
3 mins read

Ten top tips on GP-AI (a pro-human provocation)

The future of AI in general practice is not that it becomes wiser than the GP. It is that it becomes a better observer, compiler and signaller of complexity than any individual human can be. Discussion welcome!
13 November 2026
7 mins read

Before You Teach Me

Before you teach me the pathways, protocols, guidelines ...the knowledge of medicine... See me
11 November 2026
1 min read

DNA (a poem)

The shadow, the darkness, the unknown beast that growls in the hungry belly of us all.
8 November 2026
1 min read

Book review: The Eleventh Hour

It would make for a memorable Monday morning surgery. Tales of loneliness in old age. The trauma of a major disaster. Love turned to hate by coercive control. A lifetime of bitterness from gay persecution. Depression. Rejection. And those are just the
7 November 2026
2 mins read

The transplanted GP

Was I a different doctor between these clinics? I didn’t feel like it. Though perhaps being greeted with gratitude rather than frustration changes how we behave too.
4 November 2026
3 mins read

Waving or drowning?

“Fine” is such an extraordinary word. It can mean honestly fine. It can mean I don't have time to tell you. It can mean I'm getting through the day. It can mean please don't ask me.
2 November 2026
2 mins read

A (real) skeleton in the cupboard

This original half skeleton, stored in our attic, became part of our family history. Once a practical teaching aid, it has since been superseded by full-size articulated plastic models and is now more of a relic. I decided it was time to
31 October 2026
1 min read

Book review: Timor Mortis: How we Live with Death

"I personally am in favour of assisted dying and am a director of the organisation Dignity in Dying, which campaigns for a change in the law. However, I am wary of doctors who admit to hastening someone’s death because it clouds the
28 October 2026
4 mins read

Death: The secret teacher hiding in plain sight

Terminal lucidity refers to the unexpected return of mental clarity in those approaching death. It has been documented across the palliative landscape. The authors discuss what it is to encounter terminal lucidity for clinicians and families.
26 October 2026
3 mins read
1

AI for dummies (like me)

AI is increasingly becoming both a driver of national economies and a potential source of serious harms, which makes it a matter for politics, democracies, and voters. Accordingly, at least in my opinion, everyone should be familiar with the main concepts and
25 October 2026
9 mins read
1
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Why am I a doctor? A memoir

‘Life’, wrote the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, ‘must be understood backwards; but ... it must be lived forwards.’ Let me put that aphorism to the test and reflect on my career’s waypoints ...
24 October 2026
7 mins read

Shared grief

Intense grief can, despite the fact that everyone is experiencing grief somewhere in their life, be regarded as one of the biggest taboos in medicine, at least in Western society. While grief in itself is difficult to describe, it can sometimes be
22 October 2026
2 mins read

Before and after

We speak of experience as though it simply builds knowledge. But perhaps it does something deeper and more profound. It changes the person who is doing the knowing.
15 October 2026
2 mins read

On social functions

"The thing about being swept along by cultural currents is that you don’t notice until they start to change direction. Those currents are just the way things are. As GPs we go about our daily work noticing the diagnostic challenges, the prescribing
12 October 2026
2 mins read

Book Review: Hungry: A Biography of My Body

Katriona O'Sullivan's memoir Hungry depicts a growing discomfort with how both the media and the medical community are talking about patients living with obesity. We have been giving patients with obesity two options, and both take agency away. 'Eat less and move
10 October 2026
3 mins read

Is physical activity the forgotten casualty of the GLP-1 revolution?

As GLP-1 receptor agonists become embedded within obesity care, a striking paradox is emerging. We are investing unprecedented energy, resources, and attention into pharmaceutical treatment of obesity at the very moment that one of the most important determinants of long-term health —
9 October 2026
5 mins read

Empathy

Empathy makes me a great doctor. Until it doesn’t.
8 October 2026
1 min read

Reluctant Poets of the Bowel

Hypertension rarely announces itself ... And dignity ... I have learnt, Is the first casualty ... Of a viral gastroenteritis
1 October 2026
1 min read

Fast food and fast healthcare

Industrial medicine operates on the basis of similar assumptions to fast food and industrial farming, viewing process and outcome as all-important but neglecting context. Ben Hoban explores a metaphor with added bite.
30 September 2026
6 mins read
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