Clicky

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.

·

Exhibition review: A Second Life by Tracey Emin

"Emin, through her art, has converted the chaos generated from sexual abuse and poverty in early life into a beautiful lens for us to understand ourselves and our patients better." - Hector Watson and Elizabeth Walton review Tracey Emin's A Second Life,
13 June 2026
3 mins read
1

The digital panopticon, tentacles not included

Every time we examine ourselves for lumps, wonder how long  a mole has been there, or casually inspect the toilet bowl, we internalise this gaze, seeing ourselves through another’s eyes like inmates of the panopticon. We talk without irony about healthcare surveillance,
11 June 2026
5 mins read

Diving back in

So it took a few months to get back, agree to a few locums, then actually turn up and dive back in. Only then have I been able to decide how I still feel about medicine. And the answer has surprised me.
8 June 2026
2 mins read
·

Three Encounters (A poem)

We are medical students who have who have been inspired and moved by the storied nature of the consultations we saw in general practice to express this as a three-part poem.
27 May 2026
1 min read
1

The weight of ordinary things

What we lose when we lose the thinking space of the consultation is not administrative efficiency. It is a form of clinical knowledge that cannot be generated any other way: knowledge that emerges when a clinician holds the whole patient in mind
25 May 2026
2 mins read
·

The dilemma of GP triage: a poem with reflection

We are keepers of patients’ stories and often we cannot help but open the Pandora’s box : who has written this – was it a relative, an obliging receptionist or a tech savvy grandchild? Why have they used those words, what does
7 May 2026
2 mins read

Book review: Gloria Don’t Speak

"This book gives Gloria a voice. It needs to be read widely by anyone involved in the care of people with learning disability or neurodiversity." - Peter Lindsay reviews Gloria Don't Speak by Lucy Apps
2 May 2026
3 mins read

The myth of the autonomous clinician

We work through constant interaction with patients, reception staff, nurses, colleagues, and managers. Moral agency is not exercised in isolation but through negotiation, shared responsibility, and emotional labour. Ethical models that ignore this fail to describe the world in which general practice
29 April 2026
3 mins read

Speaking power to suffering

...there is a language barrier between the specialist, who thinks in terms of technical problems and how to solve them, and the lay person, who is more concerned with their own experience and how to make sense of it. Anyone working in
23 April 2026
4 mins read
1 2 3 4 … 52