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Stories - Page 4

Nine to Five

And yet, somehow, work — the thing that most adults spend the majority of their waking hours doing — often gets treated as an afterthought. A background detail.
18 August 2026
8 mins read

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

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

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

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

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

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
1

A BJGP Christmas Carol: Part Three

Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. This is part three 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
19 December 2018
8 mins read
1

A BJGP Christmas Carol: Part Two

Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. This is part two 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 file for
18 December 2018
7 mins read
1

A BJGP Christmas Carol: Part One

Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. This is part one 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
17 December 2018
6 mins read
5