Medical

Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life-and-death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids and the hospital parking meter earns more than you. Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line....

The heart-wrenchingly honest new book about life and death from forensic pathologist and best-selling author of Unnatural Causes, Dr Richard Shepherd....

Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent behind bars....

In No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, Michael shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, ageing, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions about time affect the way we approach mortality....

Adam Kay's secret diary from his time as a junior doctor This is Going to Hurt was the publishing phenomenon of the century. It has been read by millions, translated into 37 languages, and adapted into a major BBC television series. But that was only part of the story.... 

In this unprecedented memoir, a palliative medicine pioneer explores the biggest taboo in our society and the only certainty we all share: death....

What is it really like to be a brain surgeon, to hold someone's life in your hands, to drill down into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason?....

Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world....

Sobering is the story of an insecure teenager turned Liverpudlian party girl, schoolteacher turned alcoholic and now recovering alcoholic turned award-winning podcaster.... 

A gut punch of a memoir by a doctor - and comedian - whose job is to keep people alive by putting them to sleep....

Psychotherapist Michael Pond is no stranger to the devastating consequences of alcoholism. He has helped hundreds of people conquer their addictions, but this knowledge did not prevent his own near-demise....

Danger. Deportation. Death. These are just some of the fates facing the inmates at Huntercombe prison. Dr Amanda Brown is doing all she can for each patient stuck in no-man’s land....

This is a story of women in crisis, seen through the eyes of a remarkable midwife....

A young man has stopped breathing in a supermarket toilet. A pedestrian with a nasty head injury won't let the crew near him on a busy road. A newborn baby is worryingly silent....

Dear Life is the inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking and yet deeply uplifting story of the doctor we would all want to have by our side in a crisis. The hospice where Rachel works is, of course, a world haunted by loss and grief, but it is also teeming with life....

Award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the true story of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to restoring the faces of a brutalised generation....

If you're going to be ill, it's best to avoid the first Wednesday in August. This is the day when junior doctors graduate to their first placements and begin to face having to put into practice what they have spent the last six years learning....

The sequel to the best-selling Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor. The junior doctor is back, but working on the streets for the Phoenix Outreach Project. Unfortunately, his first year in a hospital hasn't quite prepared him for it.... 

From the best-selling author of With the End in Mind, this is a book about the conversations that matter and how to have them better - more honestly, more confidently and without regret....

34 Patients is the breathtaking and uplifting memoir of a doctor who dares to look closer at a crowded waiting room and value each soul and story he encounters....  

A Life in Trauma is a frank, remarkable account of a career spent helping others, offering a positive outlook on the potential of Ireland’s healthcare system in the future....

Danny Baker is a national treasure with a well-documented and colourful life. For over a quarter of a century, he has amused and entertained audiences on both radio and television....

Join Colin Black on his journey from accidental medical student to HSE and NHS trainee and, finally, consultant paediatric anaesthetist at the largest children’s hospital in Ireland, where any given day could end in laughter or tears—and that’s just the staff....

Charting his 15 years working as a GP, from rookie to becoming a partner in one of the UK’s busiest surgeries, Dr Amir Khan’s stories are as much about community and care as they are about blood tests and bodily fluids....

Are you ready, Max? If anyone's going to help me do this, it's you. The heart-warming tale of a life-saving friendship....

At the age of 37, Ingrid Ricks walked into an eye doctor's office expecting to walk out with a cute pair of red cat-eye frames—only to learn she suffered from retinitis pigmentosa, a rare, incurable eye disease that was stealing her eyesight and would eventually leave her completely blind. Gripped with the terrifying fear that she wouldn't be able to see her two young daughters grow up, would become a burden to her husband, and would lose the career and independence that defines her, Ingrid embarks on a quest to fix her eyes that ends up fixing her life.

In this inspirational autobiography, the author shares his journey of death, paralysis from the neck down, and a conversation with God. He shares his story of faith-driven determination—relearning how to breathe and to move, and adjusting to being disabled while living the rest of his days on Earth for the purpose of bringing as many people to God's kingdom. Reflecting back, the author refers to the experience as "a stroke of blessing".

A CT scan revealed Dr. James Chen, a Miami physician, had a cancerous, inoperable tumor behind his nose. The prognosis was bleak. Dr. Chen had eight weeks to live. Dr. Chen and his sons, Chris and Gordon, looked for a miracle. James and his sons were suddenly patients, forced to look at the healthcare system from the other end of the stethoscope. In The Calling, Chris and Gordon share how the family succeeded and turned what could have been a tragedy into an opportunity that will revolutionize healthcare delivery for years to come. The Calling will give you hope.

Flight of the Rondone is a true rags-to-riches tale the New York Times stated is “meant for television”. The protagonist, a high school dropout, is nicknamed in Italian U Carneveil (Walking Circus) for his entertaining and eccentric nature. Patrick Girondi starts his career shining shoes, stealing car parts, and escaping life-threatening situations while outwitting the Chicago police. He claws up to being a famous success story on the Oprah Show. His fortunes quickly change when his eldest son, Santino, is diagnosed with a fatal blood disease.

In Impact, 21 women writers consider the effects of concussion on their personal and professional lives. The anthology bears witness to the painstaking work that goes into redefining identity and regaining creative practice after a traumatic event. By sharing their complex and sometimes incomplete healing journeys, these women convey the magnitude of a disability which is often doubted, overlooked, and trivialized, in part because of its invisibility. Impact offers compassion and empathy to all listeners and families healing from concussion and other types of trauma.

A puddle of water on a highway changed Dinesh Palipana's life forever. Halfway through medical school, Dinesh was involved in a catastrophic car accident that caused a cervical spinal cord injury. After his accident, his strength and determination saw him return to complete medical school—now with quadriplegia. Dinesh was the first quadriplegic medical intern in Queensland, and the second person with quadriplegia to graduate medical school in Australia. Despite all of the pain and hardship he's faced, Dinesh now sees his accident as a turning point for the better in his life. 

In 1943, Kathleen, then thirty, was a nurse-in-training at the Blackburn Royal Infirmary. For the next three years, she kept a meticulous diary of her day-to-day existence, leaving behind a vivid record of the real-time concerns of a busy, thoughtful woman on the frontline of the war at home. Kathleen’s days were never the same. She writes in clear and lively prose about life in the hospital: of her fellow nurses, her patients, about death and dying, and the progress of the war as wounded soldiers returned from Normandy in the summer of 1944. 

I really need people to understand the reason behind me writing this book about my grandmother Henrietta Lacks. For those who have never heard of her, she is the first human whose cell line was able to grow in culture; her cells were unlike any other cells. While others cells would die, Henrietta Lacks cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours. She has contributed to the medical field in ways that no other cell line has done. HeLa cells has helped with the polio vaccine, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, sensitivity to tape, dental, and even used in the cosmetic field. 

Third year of medical school is the greatest test in a doctor’s life, a year of rotating throughout specialties, teams, hospitals, and lives. It leaves an indelible mark on every physician, but the story is often untold…until now. Told through gonzo-style, bare-it-all journaling, Love, Sanity, or Medical School takes you on a tour of third year with Dr. Stephanie Benjamin, a 9/11 and Katrina-surviving, former Junior Olympic fencer with a tenacious spirit and keen humor.

A coming-of-age memoir for modern times, Bleeder is the incredibly compelling tale of author Shelby Smoak. A hemophiliac, Smoak discovered he had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion at the start of his college career. This devastating and destabilizing news led Smoak to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness was perpetually just around the corner. Set in the 1990s along the North Carolina coast, Bleeder traces Smoak’s quest for love in a world that feels increasingly dangerous.

When Dr Laura Marshall-Andrews left the frontline buzz of hospital medicine for an NHS GP surgery, she was overwhelmed by the number of patients that were being let down by our healthcare system. Having witnessed the extent that box-ticking exercises were robbing her patients of their happiness, and sometimes their lives, she started to envisage a new way to care that put individuals and community at its centre. Laura tells the incredible stories of the patients, doctors, artists and complementary health practitioners that have shaped her years as a GP.

Dr Shahed Yousaf is a prison doctor dedicated to caring for people on the margins of society. An outsider on the inside, in Stitched Up he introduces us to a cast of unforgettable characters, including killers, con men and auto-cannibals. To Dr Yousaf, they are patients first and prisoners second—because any one of us could end up on the wrong side of the law. He tells us honestly and compassionately what it's like to be their doctor in a system that's chronically overcrowded, drastically under-resourced and all too easy to ignore.

For decades, millions of ICU survivors left the hospital with disabling symptoms all now recognised as post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS. Many COVID survivors also suffer from PICS. Dr Ely’s ground-breaking investigations advanced the understanding of PICS and introduced crucial changes that reshaped intensive care. Dr Ely shows that this new way—technology plus touch—is the future of health care and is a proven path toward reclaiming vitality. Full of wisdom and heart, Every Deep-Drawn Breath is an essential resource for all those affected by critical illness.

What do you do when suddenly, in one devastating moment, you’re a patient advocate—nurse—decision maker 24/7? You begin to search out and gather in the midst of all the caregiving. This journal recounts a caregiver's journey with a husband who suffered multiple strokes, lost his ability to talk, and fought his way back to living life fully in his highly individual—and ultimately wonderful, “new normal” way. Through the Fire will encourage caregivers not merely to survive but to thrive in walking their own ever-changing path.

From childhood, Nikki Stamp wanted to be a doctor. It was a calling, not a career. Her love for her vocation only grew as a medical student, and as a young registrar going through training rotations she fell, totally and utterly, for the hugely demanding speciality of cardiothoracic surgery. But alongside the excitement and enormous challenges of trying to make it in one of the toughest and most competitive fields of surgery came warning signs. Even in the operating theatre, where she felt most alive, she battled with sexism, enormous egos and at times outright bullying.