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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.

Caring for carers

'Caring for carers is everyone’s business, though general practitioners (and we use our words wisely) are perhaps best placed to identify and support carers -more so than other health professionals.' argue Helen Walker and Clare Gerada
14 July 2023
4 mins read
2

Seeing the tiger

If we want to avoid missing significant diagnoses, and tigers, we cannot examine every symptom or blade of grass exhaustively, but we can cultivate an openness to the sort of cognitive dissonance that points to unrecognised danger. Ben Hoban explains
13 July 2023
3 mins read

Mould and its human toll

In both primary and secondary care, we see firsthand the concerning, growing impact of mould on the health and wellbeing of our patients. These cases are a stark reminder of how significantly more needs to be done to combat the devastating impact
6 July 2023
3 mins read

The existentialist GP

"Our calcified medical models eventually crumble with the metastasis of authenticity. There are consequences if you want to be a good doctor. This is the game I play and I have accepted the rules. How pathogenic of me." Sati Heer-Stavert shares an
29 June 2023
3 mins read

Getting on with strangers

Our relationships with patients are more than just transactional, but they do not need to be based on affection or necessarily on duration. A good doctor-patient relationship is simply one that enables both parties to bridge the gap between them, and it
25 June 2023
3 mins read

Failure to launch

Hannah Milton discusses...a gradual withdrawal from social life starting in mid-teens, often with school refusal alongside an altered sleep pattern, gaming or social media addiction and a restricted and unhealthy diet with a total lack of exercise.
22 June 2023
2 mins read

Housing letters – the dilemma (a poem)

How many of us allow ourselves the possibility that from our vantage point as general practitioners, we may have had our focus so sharpened by years of walking alongside our patients that we might see the benefit of a letter where bland
14 June 2023
1 min read

Hags: The demonisation of middle-aged women

I find Smith’s rage to be energising and I do not think that those of us who grew up before Smith during second wave feminism in the 1970s can sit this one out. To have the case for the importance of biological
10 June 2023
5 mins read

An ecological prescription for primary care?

The wolves in the forest that frighten human beings are now at last being accurately named: poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, domestic abuse, adverse childhood experiences. Humans like sheep have a basic need to feel safe. They can’t function well until that need
8 June 2023
9 mins read

Short fiction: Not obsolete, yet

“And yet you followed them anyway,” replied Med AI Assistant version 3.0, or Maeve, as Raymond called her, or rather, it (he had to remember to stop anthropomorphising her, it!). “With a 100% concordance rate,” Maeve added in a light feminine voice
5 June 2023
4 mins read
3

Bringing down Goliath, by Jolyon Maugham KC

This is Jolyon Maugham: erstwhile homeless teenager, rags-to-riches tax lawyer, agitator, social media influencer and King’s Counsel with attitude. His arguments about why societal conflicts increasingly need legal recourse deserve careful scrutiny. The profession needs to understand his playbook.
4 June 2023
5 mins read

Keeping behind the curve

"We regularly face a level of demand that we don’t have the resources to meet. We gradually downgrade our aspiration from thriving to functioning to surviving, and our only options look like pushing through or getting out. Simply going on as we
1 June 2023
4 mins read
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