Claim OwnershipBedside Reading
Subscribed: 129Played: 991
Subscribe
© 2026 Bedside Reading
Description
A medical humanities podcast where we explore themes from fiction, memoir and other non traditional non-textbooks which help to make us better at what we do.
Hosted by Dr Tara George, a GP and medical educator, in each episode a different guest explores a book that has changed their practice. Follow us on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/bedsidereading.bsky.social Facebook or Instagram @bedsidereadingpodcast. If you'd like to recommend a book or to come on the podcast as a guest please email: bedsidereadingpodcast@gmail.com. Episodes hosted by Tara George, edited by Levi Gee
221 Episodes
Reverse
Send a text Poor by Katrina O'Sullivan is a book which has really, really stayed with me. I listened to it as an audiobook and I could not stop listening. I think it helps that Katrina has a fabulous voice, but actually the voice, both physically and in what she is talking about, is so powerful and so compelling. It was a real joy to talk to Lydia Fairhurst about this brilliant book, which I think has taught me much more about child safeguarding than any safeguarding training I've ever...
Send a text I love it when a guest approaches me and says, "please, can I talk about this book?" especially when it's a book that I've never, ever come across before. And today is one of those days. We are talking about The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas, which is an absolutely beautiful, very short Norwegian novel published in the 1950s, which I had never come across before. My life is so much better for having come across it. And I think my care of patients and families has been dramatically impro...
Send us a text I'm really pleased today to welcome Dr Richard Duggins to Bedside Reading to talk about his book, Burnout Free Working. We know that burnout is incredibly common in all professionals, particularly in health professionals. We also know that it is not always something we are talking enough about. Frustratingly, it is both preventable and incredibly, incredibly treatable. If only we know what's happening, if only we talk about it more, and if only we are supported to work in a he...
Send us a text I always enjoy talking to my guests about books. Sometimes I don't enjoy the book they've chosen. Often I am surprised by how much I have enjoyed something that I wasn't expecting to enjoy. Today, though, is different to all of that. It's a real joy to welcome Ripon Ahmed back to the podcast to talk about what must be one of my all-time favourite novels featuring a doctor: The Citadel by A.J. Cronin. It is undoubtedly the book that made me know that I needed to be a GP. A...
Send us a text i've had the best fun setting up and recording today's podcast with Caryn Price and Georgina Benger. We are talking about a book that they have written together called Olive's Day. We also mentioned Willow's Day, which is the second in a series which we hope will be going to be. quite a big series of fabulous books written ostensibly for children but from which grown-ups can learn an awful lot. Today's episode is all about adjustments, reasonable adjustments, pathological dema...
Send us a text I'm delighted to welcome Louise Persaud to Bedside Reading today to talk about a beautiful and very thought-provoking novel. Pearl by Sian Hughes. T "After she left, I wondered, had I been spirited it away or had she? Was I still in the real world or was this some land of bad copy? What if my mother was looking everywhere for me, calling my name? What if I could fall backwards out of this poor faded replica of reality and land in the middle of a bed of spurge? Look up and se...
Send us a text I'm delighted to welcome Hannah Loret to Bedside Reading today to talk about Overspill by Charlotte Paradise. This is a really gripping, absolutely brilliant novel. The blurb: Sara is 25. She's never used a tampon without having a panic attack. She starts dating Miles. Three months, they don't touch. Miles respects her boundaries, though he longs for them to melt away. Sara desires Miles, but she knows her body, or rather she knows it is an unknowable thing. Sara wants to be ...
Send us a text It's that strange time of year that we sometimes refer to as Twixtmas again. I hope people have received lots of fantastic new books to start reading, have eaten a bit too much, drunk a bit too much and are starting to think about plans for 2026. I've gathered together some friends of the podcast to have a think back over their year of reading in 2025 and to come up with a favourite book from 2025, as well as something that they are really looking forward to readin...
Send us a text A warm welcome today to emergency physician, Johnny Acheson, who is here to talk about his book, When Your Neurons Dance, which is a journey through Johnny's own diagnosis with Parkinson's disease at the age of 41. We explore some of the lessons that he has learned from lived experience of being a doctor, living and working with Parkinson's disease, thinking about the importance of exercise, community, support, education, It's a real eye opener as a book and one that I think w...
Send us a text The Names by Florence Knapp is undoubtedly one of my top fiction reads of 2025, if not my absolute top read of 2025. It is an astonishing first novel, which follows three different storylines, all based on what Cora names her baby boy. Will she call him Gordon? (the name chosen by her husband, also Gordon.) Will she call him Julian? Or will she call him Bear, the name suggested by his sister? This is an absolutely amazing sliding doors type of a novel with some extremely dark ...
Send us a text Shred Sisters, the debut novel by Betsy Lerner, was a real highlight of my summer reading this year. It is fabulous novel about a family, particularly about two sisters, Amy and Ollie, and the effect that Ollie's mental illness has on her, on her sister, and on the wider family. It's been a great joy today to be talking to the author, Betsy Lerner. This is Betsy's first novel, written in her 60s, suggesting that it's never too late to become a novelist. Betsy is also, u...
Send us a text How Christmasy are you feeling? It's December now and I know for some people this is a really exciting time of year. Today's podcast has been the best fun to record and is about a book which I absolutely adored. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about today's book is the fact that I didn't read it for the first time in December because it is a proper warm hug of a cheesy Christmas romantic comedy. That's not to say that it is without depth, but it really is just about th...
Send us a text I'm delighted to welcome Professor Paul Crawford to the podcast today. We are talking about his novel, The Wonders of Dr Bent, described in the publisher's blurb as "a twisted tale of murder, revenge and abandonment." It is sort of a crime thriller, but there's so much more to this novel. There are some beautiful characters. There are two main protagonists who skirt on the edges of health and and illness. We see characters who are thriving professionally whilst battling...
Send us a text A warm welcome back today to GP Kirsty Shires, who's here today to talk with me about Jacqueline Harpman's 1995 novel, I Who Have Never Known Men. This is an absolutely astonishing book. It is dystopian fiction at its best, I think. It is human, it is connected, it is thought-provoking, it is bizarre. There's so much to think about packed into 200 very short pages. I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's definitely a book I'm going to go back to, and I've really en...
Send us a text Educated by Tara Westover is one of those books which has really stayed with me since I first read it back in 2018. It's also a book that I just assumed when I started this podcast that somebody would approach me and want to talk about. It feels astonishing that we've got as far as season 11 before anybody has asked to come on and discuss it. I'm glad I waited, though, because I've thoroughly loved my conversation with Syba Sunny today about the book and about some of the them...
Send us a text Welcome to November 2025 and season 11 of the podcast,. We are celebrating our 4th Birthday in November and my guest today, Claire Le Day aka GP Steph celebrates her 40th birthday in November. Claire/Steph is here to talk about her fabulous med school diaries which have been published as Fear and Loathing in Plymouth. If you are looking for a book to make you think, to take you on a trip back down memory lane, to remember what it was like to be a teenager, to cringe alon...
Send us a text It is a huge pleasure today to welcome doctor and writer, Majid Parsa. We're talking about The Ayatollah's Gaze: a memoir of the forbidden and the fabulous, which is his first boook. What a book and what a memoir it is. I absolutely loved it. I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I picked it up. It has a phenomenal pink cover. It is wise. It is insightful. It is moving. It is very, very funny in places and it was a real window into a world which I might not otherwise ev...
Send us a text It's a real treat today to welcome one of the authors of Ultra Women, Emma Wilkinson to the podcast. Ultra Women, written by Emma Wilkinson and Lily Canter, is a book which rather defies classification. It is a book about women doing extraordinary things in the fields of endurance sport, but it's very much not a "sports book". We've got wonderful stories. We've got sociology. We've got history. We've got physiology. We've got a good dose of "invisible women" in there as well....
Send us a text Suzanne O'Sullivan's The Age of Diagnosis was hotly awaited and has received a lot of discussion on social media and in the national press. Ben Tyler and I had both really enjoyed her former books and looked forward to this book. Overdiagnosis is a bit of a hot topic lately, but as I hope we manage to explore, keeping curiosity and compassion at the forefront of what we do are much more important than making hard judgements. We mention John Harris' brilliant subst...
Send us a text John Harris' excellent book Maybe I'm Amazed has been one of my non-fiction top reads this year. It was a huge pleasure to welcome James Booth to the podcast to discuss it, and share some of our experiences. We are both GPs, we are both parents of autistic young people and we both found John's book relatable, funny, warm, moving and necessary. If you want to know more about the book, here's what the publisher's say: "In this extraordinary memoir, a father tells the s...
Comments
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States