Emma Ladds

Oct 24, 2024 | mh.bmj.com | Emma Ladds

cultural historynarrative medicinePrimary careIntroduction”To be modern is to experience personal and social life as a maelstrom, to find one’s world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be part of a universe in which ‘all that is solid melts into air” (Berman 2010). Since the early 1800s, general practitioners (GPs) have been immersed in professional, institutional and political flux.

Mar 27, 2024 | bjgp.org | Emma Ladds |Phil Whitaker

Phil Whitaker Canongate Books, 2023, HB, 320pp, £14.39, 978-1838857974Whatever happened to our dream? This question, the central theme raised by Phil Whitaker’s book, What is a Doctor? A GP’s Prescription for the Future, must resonate with many GPs across the UK. It certainly did with me.

May 25, 2023 | bjgp.org | Emma Ladds |Trish Greenhalgh

CONTINUITY IS KEYOur ongoing ethnographic research in 11 general practices across the UK5 suggests that achieving continuity, especially for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, takes additional resource and creative action from both clinicians and support staff (Ladds E, Greenhalgh T, unpublished data, 2023). It may be tempting to conclude that general practice has become so complex and is under so much pressure that continuity has simply become too difficult to achieve.