Practise What You Preach
The hypocrisy of an authoritarian doctor with life-style issues lecturing on well-being
Real Symptoms
A challenging consultation with a dissatisfied, distraught patient
Helping Hands
Institutionalization and learned helplessness in hospital
Waking
Poignant narrative about a wife waking up next to frail and incapacitated husband
U.B.H.T Lost Property
A hospital-gowned patient at hospital desk – seeking his identity
The Patient
A bleak experience visiting a hospitalized friend – the complexities of mental health care
Pants
Poem about ‘strange privileges’ of doctors from the banal to the poignant clinical episodes
Caterpillar to Butterfly
Thoughts on how medical education is a form of ‘metamorphosis’
David
Challenging patient in residential care and student’s sense of failure in everyday interactions
New Glasses
Tough recognition of a grandparent’s emotional abuse, and perspectives around death and dying
Pandora’s Box
Auto-immune disorder wreaks emotional havoc for both the clinician-patient and his family
I am Like an Onion
Meeting an elderly lady with depression – haunted by her horrific childhood experiences in wartime Germany
Tolerant Farmer
A stoic farmer reluctant to visit his G.P.
The Die Hard Smoker
An elderly smoker survives against the odds, defiant in his addiction to tobacco
Depression
A suicidal, depressed man confined at home
Why do I feel so guilty about this?
Medical student on a ward with a dying man – feeling unable to comfort him
The Caring Doctor
Black humour around a doctor’s cynical outlook
The Snowman
Doctor-snowman made in response to wishes of a terminally-ill patient on a home-visit
Targets
Humorous response to government guidelines in general practice
Christmas Decorations
Narrative based on an encounter with an elderly lady in hospital ward not wanting to return home to her isolated existence
My Mother: The Stranger
The poet accompanies his mother through acute clinical depression
Hearts Connect
‘Meeting’ the patient in an authentic way – in a memorable consultation
The Veil
The impossibility of cognitively coming to terms with news of a young baby’s imminent death
Waiting Rooms
The surgery waiting room – exploring the body language of vulnerability
Whole Person Care
A challenge to holism and creativity within medical education.
That ‘s not what my doctor in Caithness said…
A doctor and student visit a fiercely independent elderly lady surviving in chaotic living conditions
Make a Difference
An insight into social deprivation through a chance encounter with a local resident