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I hadn't read a Fortunate Man but this didn't in any way spoil my enjoyment of this book - it stands up well in its own right. Revisiting Berger’s story after half a century of seismic change, both in our society and in the ways in which medicine is practised , A Fortunate Woman sheds light on what it means to be a doctor in today’s complex and challenging world. Interweaving the doctor’s story with those of her patients, reflecting on the relationship between landscape and community, and upon the wider role of medicine in society, a unique portrait of a twenty-first century family doctor emerges. In the snow-bound January of 1947, a new GP arrived in “the valley”. He had served as a navy surgeon in the war, but now he was a country doctor, there to stay. Eighteen months later, each of his patients received a terse letter: “You are now part of the National Health Service, so you don’t need to pay me any more, thank you very much.” He remained for 35 years.
A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland, Richard Baker - Waterstones A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland, Richard Baker - Waterstones
A Fortunate Woman’ is the best book I’ve read about general practice for a long time. Astonishingly perceptive, it shows how a committed GP can keep human values alive in an increasingly impersonal NHS – and why we urgently need more like her. Professor Roger Neighbour OBE, former President, Royal College of General Practitioners So, a very big thank you to Polly Morland and to our unnamed colleague, the wonderful subject of ‘A Fortunate Woman’, for inspiring us this year and giving us hope for next. The book maps on to Berger’s by likewise offering some case histories of the kind that might feature in a TV drama. Here too the doctor drives, walks, cycles to remote cottages, to scenes of sadness and dismay, fear, stoicism and horror accidents. (All cases have been “reimagined and reconfigured” so as to retain patient confidentiality.) There are also the day-to-day, in-person, ten-minute appointments – or there were, before the pandemic. Part of this is the breakdown in secondary care. Christmas estimates that at least 20% of her workload is managing patients on interminable waiting lists. And it is a long time since she called an ambulance. “That’s not really functioning, so we usually have to drive patients to hospital.” Once there they are facing 12- and 14-hour waits in A&E. “Quite often at the moment,” she says, “I’ll turn up to work at half seven, and there’ll be a patient in the car park who has given up on the emergency department, and is waiting to bang on my door.” It’s worth reading A Fortunate Man as half of a diptych, followed by this new book, A Fortunate Woman, immediately afterwards. The latter came about through a perfect alignment of coincidences. The author, Polly Morland, is a journalist and film-maker with a kindly, dramatic writing style and a feel for the human story. In 2020 she was clearing her mother’s house, after her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, had been moved into a care home. It followed, she writes, a “frightening and chaotic” year of “doctors and paramedics, nurses and social workers”. They had all been “well meaning and professional”, but none had known her mother “before all this started, nor stayed long enough to get to know her now”.Every reader will meditate on their own encounters with GPs. Of her doctor, Morland writes: “Her life’s work is not simply about the application of a body of knowledge to an assortment of human objects… it is a pursuit meaningful in and of itself.” The word “relationship” is often used. The doctor says that hers is the only branch of medicine founded on relationships. Log in to your NB Dashboard and use the 'Add Reflective Note' button at the bottom of a blog entry to add your note. it is also a profound and philosophical book.. there were lines I’ve had to note down so I don’t forget.. especially about how we value and measure time and relationships. The description of how the doctor’s empathy & authenticity builds trust and enables vulnerability has so much relevance for my own work as a psychotherapist. And the small but deeply moving insights into all those different lives…. They’ve all stayed with me they were so resonant.
A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland | Baillie Gifford Prize A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland | Baillie Gifford Prize
Stunning in style and content and I hope it encourages all readers to reflect on the book’s key message – the importance of relationship-based care and the fact that it is under threat. Professor Martin Marshall, Chair, Royal College of General Practitioners At the college’s threescore and 10, outgoing president Martin Marshall offers a sobering assessment of how the profession is bearing up. “There has to come a point,” Marshall says, “where doctors decide, I can’t do my job any more, and then the situation will spiral out of control. I would use the term crisis: so many parts of the NHS are under such enormous pressure that they are unable to provide the personal care that patients need, unable to provide effective care, and increasingly unable to even provide safe care.” A gorgeous gorgeous meditation on primary care, pandemic, and nature ! nothing about this was groundbreaking, but it didn’t need to be — the simplicity was more than enough One of the best books about medicine that I have read. The patients’ stories are vivid, moving, often unforgettable. Polly Morland has written with incredible sensitivity, appreciation and descriptive ability about the valley and the people who live there. Professor Roger Jones OBE
Most of us over the age of 30 can remember the family doctor we had when we were kids. They met us as babies and watched us grow up. They knew our stories, those of our siblings, our parents and often our grandparents, too. These stories were fundamental to the bond of trust between doctors and their patients. We are now learning that this deep, accumulated knowledge was also palpably beneficial in medical terms. This book was inspired by the discovery of a long-lost book in the bookcase of the author’s mother—John Berger’s A Fortunate Man—which was itself the story of a country doctor published in the 1960s. In a series of coincidences, unbeknown to her, author Polly Morland found that she was living in the same remote valley that was the setting for A Fortunate Man. In turn she spoke to the current doctor of the valley who said that Berger’s book had been a big influence on her own choices to become a doctor. Author and doctor began to meet and talk, and the idea for a parallel book, set in modern times, came about. In this rare rural setting the doctor knows her patients well and provides a system of continual care in their community. I particularly enjoyed listening to the stories which I can relate to. There is a rallying call for the importance of continuity of care and the risk of losing this forever. When I chose general practice as a career it was this emphasis on continuity, families and community that appealed to me. A Fortunate Woman is a compelling, thoughtful and insightful look at the life and work of a country doctor. Funny, moving and not afraid of the dark, it will speak to readers everywhere.
A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland - Pan Macmillan
Care and Compassion. Dedication. Resilience. Adaptability. Crisis management. Continued learning. Family and community based holistic care. Above all a keen interest and mutual respect for her team and patients. So many wonderful foundations for an excellent example of what many of us want from “our doctor”. A quiet, composed love letter to the art of general practice. I assumed this was written by the doctor herself, but it was actually by a journalist who observed the doctor before and during the pandemic, as she worked long hours to support her patients and the wider community.
Wendy Moore, TLS This book deepens our understanding of the life and thoughts of a modern doctor, and the modern NHS, and it expands movingly to chronicle a community and a landscape – “the valley” itself is a defining feature of people’s lives. This was exactly my cup of tea. A beautifully written portrait of a rural GP whose tender care for her patients elicits such trust, admiration and even friendship that it seems almost alien in our transactional medical system.
A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland review — doing the rounds A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland review — doing the rounds
In his portrait of Dr Sassall, Berger is capable of profound insight and political analysis. However, he deliberately ignored the contributions of Sassall’s wife – although the doctor and Betty were a team. A footnote reads: “I do not attempt in this essay to discuss the role of Sassall’s wife or his children. My concern is his professional life.” Could Berger have imagined that Sassall’s 21st-century successor might be a woman? He wrote that “if his training were not so long and expensive, every mother would be happy for her son to become a doctor.” Now most GPs are daughters. This is a story of coincidence and serendipity, of a career in front line healthcare when the NHS itself was brought to its knees and of the relationship based medicine that might have made a difference to my Mum, had it been available to her. If you want to read a book that moves you both at the level of sentence and the quality of language and with the emotional depth of its subject matter, then A Fortunate Woman is definitely the book you should be reading’ - Samanth Subramanian, Baillie Gifford judgeDo away with the local doctor, her bike and wellies, her familiar car, her listening ear, her “accumulated knowledge” of yourself, your family and circumstances, a doctor you say hello to on the street, who recognises you “as a person, rather than a pathology” – remove her, and our whole heath system collapses too. This beautifully crafted book drew me in immediately by reminding me of so many reasons why I became a general practitioner in the first place…a compelling narrative based on patient stories. I loved it. Professor Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard Revisiting Berger’s story after half a century of seismic change, both in our society and in the ways in which medicine is practiced, A Fortunate Woman sheds light on what it means to be a doctor in today’s complex and challenging world. Interweaving the doctor’s story with those of her patients, reflecting on the relationship between landscape and community, and upon the wider role of medicine in society, a unique portrait of a twenty-first century family doctor emerges.
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