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Stories - Page 2

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"I’m getting too old for this. Every year it’s the same: I tell them I’m retiring, and everyone’s upbeat and all end-of-an-era and don’t-you-worry-we’ll-be-fine; then a week before Christmas, the emails start coming in, and they’re not fine, and it’s all a
3 December 2025
3 mins read
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Were you Dad’s Doctor?

When does a GP attend a patient’s funeral? Emma Ladds writes about how it is such a privilege to be a family doctor, and about grief when losing a patient.
11 September 2024
4 mins read
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Archery, noodles and general practice

Appeals to tradition represent a desire to preserve the evanescent, to build a clear narrative that tells us who we are and how we should go about things, even if its historical basis is shaky. We project our thinking onto ... general
2 September 2024
3 mins read
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Myriads of deities

In Japan, there is a saying that deities disguise themselves as difficulties and offer trials to those who have true courage and strength. My supervisors taught me that when we are overwhelmed and troubled by complex problems, we should respond with sincerity
8 July 2024
2 mins read
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Unheard: the medical practice of silencing

The practice of silencing is unjust and unfair, but probably universal in medicine. Trisha Greenhalgh reflects on a 'powerful' new book that is packed with compelling patient stories and accessible summaries of the academic literature. And for the teachers and trainers among
22 June 2024
3 mins read
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Post Heart Attack Review (poem)

Can't sleep unless I've had a skinful... his ruddy face flickers. Oscillating fast... between the big man not allowed to cry... and the little boy who chose to survive.
14 June 2024
1 min read
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The magic ingredient

In a time of unprecedented pressure on health professionals, especially on GPs, how do we hang onto the magic ingredients that make those brief consultations count? A poem in answer.
9 June 2024
2 mins read
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Addressing addiction

So my big reveal was that I was a doctor. That is to say a human being who'd been to medical school and was employed in delivering healthcare, not someone who'd been born with supernatural skills to look into other people's souls
3 June 2024
4 mins read
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Where ocean sailing and medical practice converge

The greatest challenge was a general practice one: not making a definitive diagnosis but to triage, having to decide what was safe to watch and wait, what could be managed with resources onboard the ship, what needed to be seen on land,
5 April 2024
4 mins read

The Diary of a Somebody: on the banality of heroism

"What Nicky Winton had once done was save the lives of 669 children, for whom he arranged air and rail journeys to the UK after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. As it happens, one of the children he saved was my
23 March 2024
4 mins read
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Believing our own tinctures

...cognitive bias sustained public faith in the medical profession long before doctors had the tools to truly alter the course of an illness. These forces did not disappear the moment that working therapeutics arrived - meaning we remain enthralled by own salves
24 February 2024
2 mins read
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Wherefore Art Thou?

‘Wherefore’, meaning ‘For what reason’, is one of the most fundamental questions we must ask in medicine. Tasneem Khan applies this idea to trauma-informed care.
21 February 2024
3 mins read
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Grieving for a lost Christmas cake…

In a world of immediacy and impermanence, my two cards and lonely box of chocolates earn a particular significance. They emphasise the humanity that is still possible in General Practice despite the need to count, measure, and capture everything – a connection
7 January 2024
3 mins read

Waiting for results

‘The doctor wants you to come back to discuss your results’. That’s what the receptionist said when she called me. ‘Can you tell me anything more?’ I asked, my body instantly awash with bilious panic. ‘No, sorry’ she said, before scheduling the
5 January 2024
3 mins read
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Introducing Jacob: The quantum AI GP chatbot

In a parallel reality, and in a distant multiverse and metaverse, BJGP Life has, in a Christmas charity raffle won a chance to interview Schrodinger’s Prime Minister (PM) a self confessed Artificial Intelligence (AI) nerd himself, the Right Hon Richard Turpin.
24 December 2023
4 mins read

A puff from the past: the foot pump nebuliser

"It was 1981. As a GP trainee I walked into the Automobile Association shop in Brighton and saw a cheap, yellow, elegant polypropylene car tyre foot pump. I realised that this would be ideal when attached to a nebuliser unit for asthma
7 December 2023
3 mins read
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Flourishing at work

Kathleen Wenaden looks back at the struggles and successes of her Hackney practice, and of how the work of the staff interweaves with the lives of the patients. She considers too the reinvigorating power of creativity and nature as ways for GPs
29 October 2023
8 mins read
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Tired all the time

I don’t know the answer. But I think I’m feeling the same. I’m exhausted, but I won’t tell you that. It’s a conveyor-belt of emotions. Next customer please! Except this is not transactional. You have a story, and it’s my job to
26 October 2023
2 mins read
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The Kobayashi Maru test

A number of storylines within the Star Trek franchise refer to a combat simulation in which a stranded starship, the Kobayashi Maru, must be rescued, but in which any attempt to do so inevitably results in failure. Ben Hoban can relate...
15 September 2023
3 mins read

The ‘Deluxe’

The 'deluxe' breakfast came with half a mushroom, and this was unexpectedly upsetting. The menu had boasted ‘a portobello mushroom’ and the absent half felt fraudulent, stolen even.
6 August 2023
2 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
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