Showing titles in Medical

Seamus O'Mahony charts the realities of work in the 'ministry of bodies', that huge complex where people come to be cured and to die. From unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls and wards that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence.

After being given a terminal diagnosis with only a few weeks to live, Jane McLelland dug up research, some decades old, in her quest to survive. Rather than aiming to cure cancer, which in many cases is unachievable, Jane's approach was to stop it growing. Remarkably, her approach not only stopped it growing, it disappeared altogether. There are now clinics following her protocol, achieving remarkable successes.

While much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But understanding doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice can make all the difference on giving and getting the best medical care.

It takes courage to love the things of this world when all of them, without fail, are fleeting. Yet when everything you have been and done and meant to the world is being prised from your grasp, human connections are the vital medicine. It is other people who make the difference. Rachel Clarke grew up spellbound by her father's stories of practising medicine. Then, as a doctor herself, one who specialised in palliative medicine, she found herself contemplating all her training had taught her in the face of her own beloved father's mortality.

When Peter Canning started work as a paramedic on the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, 25 years ago, he believed drug users were victims only of their own character flaws. Although he took care of them, he did not care for them. But as the overdoses escalated, Canning began asking his patients how they had gotten started on their perilous journeys. And while no two tales were the same, their heartrending similarities changed Canning's view and moved him to educate himself about the science of addiction.

Since seeking asylum in the UK, Hassan’s unshakeable instinct to raise awareness, help and connect has seen him share not only his experience as a refugee, but to the coronavirus pandemic. Hassan documented his work as a cleaner on a London hospital COVID-19 ward. His photographs and advocacy shone a spotlight on the often overlooked NHS cleaners and porters and instigated a U-turn on a government bill that had excluded their families from the bereavement compensation scheme.

Meet Doctor Ben MacFarlane - a very modern flying doctor. His job is get on a plane and bring patients home after holiday disasters, gap year crises, embarrassing incidents on business trips and all the other things that can go wrong when we head overseas. Holiday SOS is his extraordinary story. It’s a unique medical memoir of the people he helps - and a year in the life of one of the world’s most frequent flyers!

After a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under section two of the Mental Health Act. From hypomania in the Alps, to a complete breakdown and a locked ward in Wakefield, this is a gripping account of how the mind loses touch with reality, how we fall apart and how we can be healed - or not - by treatment. A story of the wonder and intensity of the manic experience, as well as its peril and strangeness, it is shot through with the love, kindness, humour and care of those who deal with someone who becomes dangerously ill.

What Is a Doctor? is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate about how we maintain an NHS that is both fit for purpose and free. Using stories and case studies from across his thirty-year career as a GP, Dr Phil Whitaker offers insight into the medical movements, political interference and societal changes that have transformed the role of doctor over the past three decades.

Tony Redmond is one of the few truly good people you will ever meet. His is a story of tireless hard work and astonishing bravery across wars, refugee crises, air crashes, earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes and disease outbreaks for more than 30 years. Featuring stories of hope and redemption, as well as untold suffering and mismanagement, this unique account could only have been written one who has for decades performed incredible feats of altruism.

The junior doctor...back on the wards. After a year on the streets treating outreach patients, Max Pemberton is back in the relative comfort of hospital. This time running between elderly care and the dementia clinic to A&E and outpatients. No longer inexperienced (Max and his doctor friends can now tell when someone is actually dead), they are on the front line of patient care, for better or worse.

With over 30 years of experience as a nurse, Anthea thought she had seen it all. But with Covid came the greatest trial, personally and professionally, of her life. Thrust into hourly challenges–many a matter of life and death–while on the Critical Care units of St George’s in south London, Anthea processed her shocking experiences through writing. It started with an email to request biscuits. But her appeal to help boost the morale of her fellow nurses soon turned into a series of astonishingly moving stories detailing the realities of being a front line worker.

When the newly qualified vet, James Herriot, arrives in the small Yorkshire village of Darrowby, he has no idea of the new friends he will meet or adventures that lie ahead. From the author whose books inspired the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small, this first volume of unforgettable memoirs chronicles James Herriot's first years as a country vet, with the signature storytelling magic that has made him a favourite the world over.

Mortality is the most meditative collection of writing Hitchens has ever produced - at once an unsparingly honest account of the ravages of his disease, an examination of cancer etiquette and the coda to a lifetime of fierce debate and peerless prose. In this eloquent confrontation with mortality, Hitchens returns a human face to a disease that has become a contemporary cipher of suffering.

Benjamin Daniels is angry. He is frustrated, confused, baffled and, quite frequently, very funny. He is also a GP. These are his confessions. Benjamin Daniels is back. He may be older, wiser and more experienced, but his patients are no less outrageous. Further Confessions of a GP is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the best-selling Confessions of a GP. With more eyebrow-raising stories from the world of general practice, Dr Daniels will once again amuse, shock, and surprise.You'll never feel the same about going to the doctor again.…

Christie Watson was a nurse for 20 years. Taking us from birth to death and from A&E to the mortuary, The Language of Kindness is an astonishing account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness. We watch Christie as she nurses a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, we stand by her side during her patient's agonising heart-lung transplant and we hold our breath as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive.

Esmé Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at Yale, Stanford and the literary world, she would find herself floored by an overwhelming terror that 'spread like blood', or convinced that she was dead, or that her friends were robots, or spiders were eating holes in her brain.

Ed Patrick is an anaesthetist. Strong drugs for his patients, strong coffee for him. But it's not just sleep-giving for this anaesthetist, as he navigates emergencies, patients not breathing for themselves and living with a terrifying sense of responsibility. It's enough to leave anyone feeling numb. But don't worry, there's plenty of laughing gas to be had.

As a medical detective of the modern world, forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal’s chief goal is to bring perpetrators to justice. He has performed thousands of autopsies, which have helped bring numerous criminals to book. In Autopsy he covers the hard lessons learnt as a rookie pathologist, as well as some of the most unusual cases he’s encountered. During his career, for example, he has dealt with high-profile deaths, mass disasters, death by lightning and people killed by African wildlife.

Emmeline Clein's own history of disordered eating began when she was just twelve. In Dead Weight, alongside her own experience and through the stories of other women – famous figures from across time and popular culture, and girls she's known and loved – she traces the medical and cultural history of anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia and binge eating disorder.