The Book Club meets on the 1st Monday every other month in the Patients' Library (adjoining the main hospital library). It provides an opportunity to meet other readers in the Trust and discuss fiction and non-fiction based on clinical themes. All colleagues are welcome to come along and join the discussion.
If you would like further information or to borrow a copy of the books please contact helen.barlow6@nhs.net.
If you would like further information or to borrow a copy of the books please contact helen.barlow6@nhs.net.
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This month we’re reading The Children Act by Ian McEwan. We’ll meet over coffee and cake on Monday 3rd December 5-6pm in the hospital library.
Fiona Maye, a leading High Court judge, renowned for her fierce intelligence and sensitivity, is called on to try an urgent case. For religious reasons, a seventeen year old boy is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life. Time is running out. She visits the boy in hospital – an encounter which stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. But it is Fiona who must ultimately decide whether he lives or dies and her judgement will have momentous consequences for them both. |
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On 4th February we’ll be discussing Also Human – the inner lives of doctors by Caroline Elton:
Doctors are the people we turn to when we fall ill. They are the people we trust with our lives, and with the lives of those we love. Yet who can doctors turn to at moments of stress, or when their own working lives break down? What does it take to confront death, disease, distress and suffering every day? To work in a healthcare system that is stretched to breaking point? To carry the responsibility of making decisions that can irrevocably change someone’s life – or possibly end it? And how do doctors cope with their own questions and fears, when they are expected to have all the answers? Caroline Elton is a psychologist who specialises in helping doctors. For over twenty years she has listened as doctors have unburdened themselves of the pressures of their jobs: the obstetrician whose own fertility treatment failed; the trainee oncologist who found herself unable to treat patients suffering from the disease that killed her father; the brilliant neurosurgeon struggling to progress her career in an environment that was hostile to women. Drawing on extraordinary case studies and decades of work supporting clinicians, Also Human presents a provocative, perceptive and deeply humane examination of the modern medical profession. |