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A medical humanities podcast for bibliophile health care professionals 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 Twitter @bedsidepodcast 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
171 Episodes
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Send us a text The Reverend Richard Cole's memoir of grieving for his husband David, The Madness of Grief, is I think one of the most brilliant and moving books on the topic I have ever read. When I started the podcast, I imagined that it wouldn't be long before somebody got in contact and wanted to talk about it. So it's been astonishing that we are almost at the end of season eight before a guest has asked to come and talk about it. And I'm glad I waited because I have loved talking to Lyns...
Send us a text It's a really warm welcome back today to Anna Baverstock, a paediatrician from Taunton in Somerset. We are talking today about A Beginner's Guide to Dying by Simon Boas. Don't let the word dying in the title put you off. This is an absolutely wonderful and incredibly uplifting short book. It was written by Simon Boas in the last few months of his life. It is reflections on a life immensely well lived and his reflections on the way to be. How to live life to the full, especia...
Send us a text Lucy Easthope's book, When the Dust Settles, is quite possibly one of the most astonishing things I have ever read. Having come back to it for today's podcast, I am struck again by the compassionate wisdom with which Lucy writes and how relevant the themes from disaster recovery are to all of us, particularly those of us working in healthcare. It was such a treat to talk to Lucy herself. I think I managed not to be too fan girly during the course of this interview. You can let...
Send us a text Today I am talking to Kas Hawes, a GP in the North of England, about her book, The Heart of the Matter, A Day in the Life of a GP. On the jacket, it is described as "a unique story, the story of a doctor and the many patients she sees every day, a tale of the diversity of life, the uniqueness of individuals and the impact of deprivation on the health of society". The blurb goes on to say this is a book about "being human, the challenge of being on the front line, trying ...
Send us a text What a treat recording this episode was. Such a privilege to meet one of my medical writing heroes, Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan to talk about her book, Unheard, The Medical Practice of Silencing. If you haven't read it yet, oh my goodness, I'm actually quite jealous. You're in for a real treat. It's an absolutely wonderful book. I listened to the audiobook and it felt like having Rageshri with me as I was pottering around the house doing my chores and as I was driving ...
Send us a text I was so glad to get to talk to GP Amy Fulton about Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. This is an astonishingly good dystopian fiction novel, which I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed. It's unusual to find a novel that really has you gripped, sucked into another world imagining something unimaginable and then brought back to earth again and again and again when you realise that this is fiction and of course this is not happening in Ireland where this book is set but that there is a...
Send us a text I'd like to dedicate today's episode of Bedside Reading to Corporal Hugh Cunningham of the Royal Engineers. Hugh died in 2009 as a result of PTSD. And as I read Matthew Green's Aftershock: the Untold Story of Surviving Peace, I thought a lot about him and his family, as well as more widely about other military veterans affected by PTSD. I've really enjoyed my conversation with Manchester Portfolio GP Zalan Alam today. It is such an important book. I'm not going to...
Send us a text I love coming back to books I've read in the past that I've half remembered and half forgotten and it's one of those episodes today. I'm delighted to welcome Sarah Marwick to Bedside Reading to talk about Never Split the Difference: negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss. This is such an accessible brilliant book written by a former FBI hostage negotiator. You may think, what on earth has hostage negotiation got to do with working in the and NHS? Actual...
Send us a text I'm really pleased to welcome GP, lifestyle medicine expert and GP educator Anish Kotecha to Bedside Reading today. We are talking about a book called Age Proof by Rose Ann Kenny. You may be relieved to discover that when we say the science of aging, we are not talking about the science fiction of anti-aging and we're certainly not talking about chemicals or drugs or modifications of anything other than lifestyle. It was really good to talk to Anish about connection, about inti...
Send us a text Happy New Year listeners! Have you made any New Year's resolutions? Have you decided that 2025 is the year where things are going to be different? Have you been thinking about boundaries? Or about well-being? Or about that hideous word resilience which is so misused by NHS managers and has come to be a bit of a dirty word when actually the concept is a really good one. Today, I'm delighted to be talking to Chrissie Mowbray and Karen Forshaw about their book, How to Rise: a C...
Send us a text I've got a collaborative Twixtmas special coming up today. I've asked a number of friends of the podcast to tell us about their top read of 2024 and what they're most looking forward to reading in 2025. Thanks for joining me in 2024, and I'm looking forward to sharing plenty more books with you in 2025. Featured today are the voices and choices of: Sabina Dosani https://sabinadosani.com/ Leah Hazard https://www.leahhazard.co.uk/ Derek Ochiai https://twitter.com/DrDerekOchiai...
Send us a text I imagine there may be lots of listeners who are very familiar with Marion Keyes and the Walsh family so it was a great joy today to be talking to Rosie Shire about the latest in the Walsh family saga, My Favourite Mistake by Marion Keyes. There is some typical Marion Keyes in that you know that nothing really, really bad is ever going to happen, that the plot is going to keep you going as you go along and there's going to be nothing truly miserable. There's quite a lot of dep...
Send us a text Today's book is one like nothing else I've ever read. It's a real treat to talk to liaison psychiatrist Amy Gledhill about In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Mercado. This is an extraordinary memoir. It is incredibly beautifully written and it is ostensibly about a controlling and abusive relationship with the complicating factor of being a queer relationship. There's much more to it than that. It is incredibly beautifully written, very very short chapters, so incredibly readab...
Send us a text It's a huge treat today to welcome Chella Quint OBE to Bedside Reading. Chella is a period activist and educator from Sheffield and she is the author of two absolutely wonderful books including Own Your Period: a fact-filled guide to period positivity which I think is quite possibly one of the best non-fiction books for young people that you could ever want to read. It is phenomenal for older people as well and for grown-ups, for doctors, for anybody, definitely definitely one ...
Send us a text A warm welcome today to former GP and now headache specialist, Dr Janice Heath, who joins me today to talk about The Outrun, Amy Liptrot's memoir of alcoholism, addiction, recovery and living in Orkney. It's a really beautiful book which has been made into a very recent film starring Saoirse Ronan and the storytelling and the imagery in the book are absolutely stunning. (Janice has watched the film. I haven't yet. I've seen the trailers though and actually the images seem just...
Send us a text It's a welcome back today to psychiatrist Gill Patterson, who's here to talk about the Scottish Book Trust's Book Week Scotland publication of 2024, which is called Hope. This is a collection of true stories written by people from Scotland. The Scottish Book Trust produce 65,000 free copies of Hope which are available in Scotland or from the Scottish Book Trust website https://shop.scottishbooktrust.com/products/hope-book It was brilliant to talk to Gill both about her ow...
Send us a text It's a real joy today to welcome GP Eugenia Lee back to Bedside Reading to talk about Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See, which is a fabulous novel. It's historical fiction based on the true character of Tan Yunxian who was a doctor in 15th century China . She lived to the ripe age of about 92 and published a book of her cases in 1511. That book survived into the current day and Lisa See has picked that up, and what is known of Lady Tan and then created this fabulous histo...
Send us a text It was a huge honour to get an email from Rachel Zimmerman's publicist asking if I would consider reading a pre-publication copy of her new book, Us After, and to have Rachel on the show. Us After is the astonishing memoir of Rachel and her daughters' lives after the death of her husband Seth by suicide. Before you think this is all going to be very, very depressing, it really isn't. It's an incredibly important and insightful book which Rachel describes as being "a little win...
Send us a text Welcome to the first episode of season 8 of Bedside Reading!! I am delighted today to welcome Martin Billington back to Bedside Reading to talk about you don't have to be mad to work here, the memoir of Benji Waterhouse, NHS psychiatrist and stand-up comedian. It was great fun to hear Benji talk about his book and when I saw him live a couple of years ago and and I was really excited when the book came out that I really desperately wanted to read it. It didn't disappoint a...
Send us a text It's a rewind episode today. I think lots of people have been watching the incredible season three of Heartstopper on Netflix. If you haven't, you certainly should. If you've not discovered Heartstopper at all, you've got such a treat if you want to binge all three series (or better still to pick up the wonderful graohic novels by Alive Oseman). I've chosen to bring back an episode, an episode that's actually been one of the most downloaded episodes of Bedside Reading ...
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