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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.

Museums of medical curiosities

"Dragon’s blood potion, a case of 100 prosthetic glass eyes, a secret subterranean alchemist’s workshop, and devices used to protect against body snatchers are a few of the medical curiosities I’ve discovered on my recent travels ..."
28 February 2026
4 mins read

Who decides what counts as illness?

Patients’ apologies for “wasting time” are not personal quirks but learned responses to a system that often treats unexplained symptoms as data rather than lived experience.
25 February 2026
3 mins read

Let’s just do some bloods…

Anyone can implement a protocol. Anyone can order a blood test. The real skill of a primary care clinician is in navigating the complexity and finding a helpful path forward for the unique individual in front of us.
23 February 2026
3 mins read

The consultation beneath the consultation

I almost missed it. My instinct was to dive into the prescription screen. But something in her silence caught me. I paused and softened my voice. “You seem like you’re carrying a lot today.”
20 February 2026
4 mins read

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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