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Stories - Page 3

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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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An ecological prescription for primary care?

The wolves in the forest that frighten human beings are now at last being accurately named: poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, domestic abuse, adverse childhood experiences. Humans like sheep have a basic need to feel safe. They can’t function well until that need
8 June 2023
9 mins read

Short fiction: Not obsolete, yet

“And yet you followed them anyway,” replied Med AI Assistant version 3.0, or Maeve, as Raymond called her, or rather, it (he had to remember to stop anthropomorphising her, it!). “With a 100% concordance rate,” Maeve added in a light feminine voice
5 June 2023
4 mins read
3
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Imagining the future

The place of Medicine in our imagined future, science fiction, tends to be defined by technology. As in science fiction, so in medicine there is a constant tension between the technological and the human, what is possible and what is desirable.
5 April 2023
3 mins read
1

Flash fiction: Sunset

I always walk home from work. It gets me moving after 10 hours of mostly sitting in other people’s heads. My walk home is an oasis of no small talk, no confusion, no hidden agendas...
26 March 2023
1 min read
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“We threw the guidelines at her.”

Careful, caring and person-centred application of guidance is required to ensure patients benefit from, and are not harmed by, healthcare. I’d like to talk about Joan, an 86-year-old lady who had rarely visited the surgery. We threw the guidelines at her...
25 March 2023
3 mins read
2
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Your child’s GP

...After a long day being your child’s GP, I come home. I get a few tantrums, followed by a cuddle 10 minutes later. I am a mum, just like you.
19 March 2023
1 min read
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A week in the day of Dr Somebody’s Diary

Dr Somebody* is a fictional late middle aged, mild to moderately burnout GP Partner in North London; he is suspicious about the current managerial changes in the NHS; his motto however is "contented with little, yet wishing for more", and at heart
12 March 2023
8 mins read
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Being an ethnic doctor is easier … but not easy

My parents being immigrants, enforced into us to keep our heads down and work hard, to adopt a ‘don’t cause trouble’ attitude... Being called these occasional names I still performed well academically at school, it never placed limits. Life was good …
9 March 2023
2 mins read
2
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Not just a theory?

Newshound: Thanks for agreeing to see me, doctor… Subject: John, it's just John these days. I appreciate your making the trip. Did anyone try to stop you? (Dystopian satire from Ben Hoban)
19 February 2023
3 mins read
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Five book-ish stocking fillers

These are five small 'stocking-filler' books that you might see in a bookshop or a charity shop. They are all short and readable, and small enough to fit into most Christmas stockings. They all importantly have some inspiration and wisdom with which
24 December 2022
3 mins read
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The Long Road

My love for those who could not help themselves was fuelled by passion, As medicine became my way of helping them with care and compassion.
23 December 2022
7 mins read
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A tyranny of nouns

Doctors are inordinately fond of nouns. By and large, patients come to us not just with nouns, but with stories which include them but are driven along by verbs, words of action, backed up by adverbs, pronouns, and so on...
4 November 2022
4 mins read
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Pulp fiction, resilience, or something else?

So anyway, I left by the COVID door under cover of a virtual PCN meeting, figuring that by the time anyone noticed the urine samples building up at reception I’d be long gone. I’d heard of a guy with the kind of
22 October 2022
3 mins read
1
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Diagnosing Faria

Alexandre Dumas’s 19th century French novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, doesn’t usually make the list of standard medical texts but perhaps it should not be so readily dismissed. It captures the spirit of an age when medicine was undergoing a revolution...
18 September 2022
3 mins read
1
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Tea at 4:30, with milk?

‘Yes dad, a little dash like normal.’ I never knew how to reply. Was he asking a question? Was he just making a statement, did he even want milk in it? Had he forgotten how he had his tea? I never knew
13 August 2022
3 mins read

Telling a good story

You and I may observe the same event but give different accounts based on our own understanding of what we’ve seen, influenced by how we felt, our past experiences and values. Ben Hoban discusses storytelling as a clinical phenomenon.
5 July 2022
3 mins read
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Heroes with bifocals

Ben Hoban reflects on general practice as a 'Hero's journey,' but argues that this must be reconciled with the patient narrative. Don your narrative bifocals!
8 June 2022
2 mins read
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Retrospectoscopy

How is it that something can seem so obvious in hindsight, when at the time it was anything but obvious? Ben Hoban shows us his retrospectoscope!
2 June 2022
2 mins read
1

Empathy PRN

Chloe Webster, a trainee, reflects on a "Formula One speed" surgical ward round where she suddenly rediscovered the magic of General Practice.
6 November 2020
2 mins read

A BJGP Christmas Carol: Part Five

Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. This is part five of a five part series. You can download the full five part version for free as an epub or mobi file for use with your Kindle or other e-reader. Stave
21 December 2018
9 mins read
2

A BJGP Christmas Carol: Part Four

Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. This is part four of a five part series. If you can’t wait and like to binge read then you can download the full five part version for free as an epub or mobi
20 December 2018
8 mins read
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