A poem about growing through failure
Read More
Incisedlines
In these posts I want to share some of the ways that I have tried to understand and make sense of the world around.
Read More
Incisedlines
Tyrian Purple
Turn, turn, turn
A poem from the frontline of the NHS – a personal psalm for Good Friday
Read More
Physician, anneal thyself
Stress appears an inescapable part of the practice of healthcare, but is a focus on building resilience the best way to approach the problem?
Read More
In the Temple of Mammon
Two hundred hour stints in Mammon’s gold temple, / loneliness tempered by rites which appal
Read More
Gone
Breaking the fences, / bending the boundaries, / blind to the rules that bound / mere mortals
Read More
Safety II
What is the best way to improve the safety and quality of care in clinical practice?
Read More
Dandelion Clocks
Who ever sees their own metamorphosis? / Those glorious suns turn to angst-ridden spheres, / Like unspoken rumours of far away wars
Read More
Loss of Voice
I’d strayed: learnt the ways of a cruel cut-throat gang
Read More
Science and Charity: the Limits of Candour
Openness is often presented as an ultimate Good in clinical practice, but are there healthy limits to empathy and candour, for both patient and carer?
Read More
Growth Rings
Exploring the positive possibilities of mistakes as sources of sources of learning, inspiration, discovery and reconciliation
Read More
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
What happens when we compare our insides with others’ outsides?
Read More
True Cut: Epilogue
Chrissie’s endless / Sisyphean sentence— / the insatiable cycle / of haemo-dialysis— / is finally done. / For today.
Read More
True Cut 9
time is not the great healer / that some would suppose: but rather a dealer in counterfeit truth / a practiced deceiver in layers of story
Read More
True Cut 8
The tangle of tubes that’s kept Chrissie alive / for the past seven days, now scares her to death
Read More
True Cut 7
All through a long, lonely, longing night’s vigil / Jo is engulfed by a darkening ocean / of grief, guilt and shame, swept / out on a rip tide of rising despair
Read More
True Cut 6
Listen: / the theatre suite’s in trauma: / withdrawn, and silent.
Read More
True Cut 5
Rise and fall/ And rise. And fall/ Now slave to a rhythm/beyond her control/ Arms stretched wide/ in trusting surrender,/Chrissie waits…
Read More
True Cut 4
Arms raised, face masked/Jo scrubs, gloves and gowns. Tries to prepare:/a sorcerer’s apprentice invoking powerful forces,/his body becoming, increasingly tense
Read More
True Cut 3
Curled on her side,/cocooned in pain a/slick of cold sweat/on her ashen face,/Chrissie waits,/while, with/white coat and Janus /faced mask, Jo puts on/a compassionate/carapace.
Read More
True Cut 2
To begin then, at the beginning,/with a team—of a sort./A surgeon, and apprentice/brilliantly lit,/like moths round a flame,/both teacher and taught/drawn to the wound,/ and the instruments’ glint.
Read More