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Opinion - Page 5

Seeing double

Alongside them is another person, invisible and nameless. This is the person shaped by fear, experience, and memory; by what they have learned it is safe to say, and what it costs to say more.
8 January 2026
2 mins read
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Adolescent screening for digital diabetes

In the same way there is an unsettling parallel in the rise of obesity and ultra-processed food from the 1970’s onwards, the rise of faster and more invasive digital technology seems to link with a decline in mental health. Giles Dawnay discusses
17 February 2025
4 mins read
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Deep end – The scent of poverty

What exactly is this smell of poverty? It is so pervasive. I recognise it in an instance. This perfume should be called “Deep End”, and it gives every encounter with poverty a visceral olfactory dimension. Jen Foell reflects.
14 February 2025
5 mins read
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Ripples on a pond

If it is difficult to agree what exactly we mean by health, it is perhaps unsurprising that we also approach unhealth in a number of different ways. Ben Hoban reflects on the meanings of 'unhealth.'
13 February 2025
4 mins read
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Fixing our broken food health system

A recent House of Lords report puts the blame for rising obesity squarely at the feet of the food industry, stating that marketing of unhealthy food products has created an ‘obesogenic’ food environment. Nada Khan investigates the broken food system.
6 February 2025
6 mins read
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Systems Update (A poem)

In the hope that we can reflect on not losing the foundations of medicine, but also hold with conviction the new tools that we have been given with which to help and to heal.
29 January 2025
1 min read
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Narrative medicine

A means by which participants can make some sense of their threads... And nurse the ends of their unravelled stories. The healing ...Is in the weaving.
21 January 2025
1 min read

Stories and medical records

"... we’re in a situation where we understand the importance of patient narratives, but if we talk about this in these terms to policymakers and even some of our specialist colleagues, we’ll be dismissed as chin-stroking hippies, unable to do proper medicine."
10 January 2025
2 mins read
2
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Irresistible and immovable values

The thread that runs through the debate, however, seems to be a genuine desire on both sides to help people who are suffering, and the conflict between opposing views reflects not a greater or lesser degree of care, but rather the familiar
8 January 2025
4 mins read
2
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GPs and assisted dying

GPs have a duty to be well-informed about the issues regardless of whether we are conscientiously pro, anti, or neutral. We anticipate publishing many articles around this topic, and the specifics of the bill, and we welcome the opportunity to ensure primary
3 January 2025
3 mins read

Win the crowd (Maximus)

Luke Sayers reflects on what the movie 'Gladiator' has to teach General Practice. We must win the crowd... before it's too late.
31 December 2024
3 mins read
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Kez and the system

Kez has an embarrassing problem. He has tried a cream that maybe worked in the past but not now. He needs the doctor, he thinks. He rings the surgery...
30 December 2024
2 mins read
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Overcoming the Monster

How we understand our story makes a difference to how we go about the job, how effectively we do it, and how it leaves us feeling when we go home... One of these proto-narratives is especially relevant to us as doctors: Overcoming
17 December 2024
3 mins read
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Rebalancing Medicine by Neal Maskrey

Rebalancing Medicine can seem an impossible task. This book describes, often from personal experience, how the political fashions of the last decades first facilitated and then debilitated the essential workings of the NHS. Richard Lehman reviews.
14 December 2024
4 mins read

General Practice – time for an upgrade!

There is no doubt that general practice now is very different in almost every way compared to 20 years ago. But has enough been done over this period to ensure its longevity as a profession? Sarah Rishi makes the case for a
13 December 2024
3 mins read

Just a thought

Mike Thirlwall fears that patients and family doctors may be steadily drifting apart and something very precious may be lost for ever.
10 December 2024
3 mins read
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A brief vulnerability

"For the first time for many years I felt that I had lost control. Suddenly my comfortable Western privilege wasn’t working. I felt stranded, helpless, a powerless fragment of a distressed and angry crowd."
2 December 2024
3 mins read
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For Who Do You Serve?

For my attention is elsewhere... Occupied by a mere digital abstraction... The computer between us acting as a physical metaphor... A poem by Callum Leese
28 November 2024
1 min read
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