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Book review - Page 3

A Necessary Kindness

The author strongly supports a woman’s right to choose, arguing for the decriminalisation of abortion in the UK, suggesting that it should be regulated as a part of healthcare. She describes recent cases where women have been given custodial sentences which have
6 April 2024
1 min read
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The real Doc Martin

Notwithstanding the corny connection to a fictional character, and the 'old school' approach to confidentiality, this is a charming and authentic memoir. An anecdote is by definition an unpublished story - and Martin Stagg has converted his anecdotes into 'ecdotes.'
9 March 2024
3 mins read
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Belly Woman by Benjamin Black

You may recognise the frustration and anger that surface when resources run short; fractures in infrastructure become apparent; staff are scarce, undertrained and approaching burnout; protocols written by distant bureaucrats fail to reflect the realities you are seeing on the front line;
8 March 2024
4 mins read

How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t

Ian Dunt has written an easy-to-read explainer about how our UK Government is supposed to work and how it actually does work. To show the archaic ways of working and perverse incentives that are the operating mechanisms, he strips the system down
17 February 2024
3 mins read

The Health Fix

What is intensely likeable for me as a GP in his 40s is that The Health Fix also written by a GP in his 40s, with an engaging approach that blends clinical experience, medical evidence and personal history.
3 February 2024
2 mins read

Portable Magic

David Jeffrey reviews a terrific manual for bibliophiles. General practitioners may be reassured that bibliomaniacs, as yet, do not present for therapeutic intervention.
27 January 2024
1 min read

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Bad Blood, the 2019 book (with a new 2023 afterword) by seasoned journalist John Carreyrou, offers a deep dive into the dramatic rise and fall of Theranos, a once-promising biotech startup in the US. Self-admitted 'health-tech' enthusiast Richard Armitage reviews the book.
6 January 2024
2 mins read

Book review: Pain: The Ultimate Mentor

Pain: The Ultimate Mentor is a deeply insightful book that reshapes our understanding of pain and its role in our lives, offering a fresh and practical perspective on managing pain ...
30 December 2023
1 min read

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

If you’re in the market for a short read to lift your spirits at Christmas, Dickens’ classic really delivers. It is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser described in deliciously grim terms...
23 December 2023
2 mins read

Book review: Habitual Ethics?

As a GP, do you consider yourself the living embodiment of practical virtue? Or just an ordinary doctor struggling to do a decent job for as many hours as the day provides? You could argue that there is really no great difference
4 November 2023
5 mins read
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Medical generalism – now!

In Medical Generalism—Now!, Joanne Reeve extends her concept of the creative self. And she argues that the fundamental challenge for the contemporary primary care clinician is to honour the patient’s creative abilities and provide the kind of flexible, tailored care that allows
21 October 2023
4 mins read
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Radical Help by Hilary Cottam

'A relational way of working, thinking and designing is one that creates possibility for change, one that creates abundance – our capacity for relationships, like love, is infinite.’ Emilie Couchman reviews a call for radical reform
15 October 2023
5 mins read

See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse

This book is important for GPs to read because domestic abuse is common and leads to longstanding health issues for women, children, and men. Robust evidence and research are interspersed between individual stories that illustrate the variety of forms that abuse can
12 October 2023
2 mins read
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The great NHS heist

The argument is that, for decades, ‘business friendly’ governments have been allowing private interests to extract vast fortunes from the NHS and that over time the service has been increasingly reformed to make it ready for corporate takeover. This would make our
30 September 2023
2 mins read
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‘What is a doctor?’ by Phil Whitaker

The title, ‘What is a doctor?’, neatly articulates a contemporary query. As the multidisciplinary team (MDT) becomes increasingly complex with additional moving parts, the role of the doctor becomes ever more difficult to describe. The memory of the ‘family doctor’ is fading.
23 September 2023
3 mins read

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

In relying on a limited and necessarily technical professional vocabulary, we often deny ourselves precisely those tools which would help us understand and treat our patients’ difficulties, and indeed our own, muses Ben Hoban
2 September 2023
2 mins read
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