Monthly Archives: October 2024

This meeting could have been an email

Posted on October 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

I spend more of my life in meetings than I would like and often think “this meeting could have been an email.” But this week I have been in several short and very effective meetings. It is amazing what can happen when there is a clear shared purpose and the right people are in the (virtual) room. There has been research into the psychology of work meetings, and the impacts for organisational outcomes and culture. I wish everyone would be more critical of meetings and ensure they always had a clear purpose that could not be achieved by another communication method. I for one commit to pausing before sending any future diary invites!

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Every day I pray for love

Posted on October 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

I was off work this week, but somehow found myself even more busy than usual. Being off work I had more time to watch the live streamed horrors in Gaza and Lebanon. I signed more petitions. I stepped up my boycott of companies profiting from Israel’s crimes. I sent money directly to a family in Khan Younis. Osama is 22, the oldest of 8 siblings, trying to keep his displaced family safe. His father needs medication, but with Israel’s military targeting hospitals and killing healthcare workers, leaving no functioning health service, very little is available. Almost no aid is entering Gaza. I can’t watch. I can’t not watch. I feel hollow.

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Week 0

Posted on October 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

I started this blog in 2011 because “my job makes me think a lot – about people, life, death, injustice and how things could be better.” I often feel that I have too many thoughts, too many things to share, but not enough time to write a fully formed article or blog post. My partner writes week notes, a summary of things he’s working on, things that have happened in the week and things he has read or seen. Inspired by him, I’m going to give them a go.

It is week 41 of 2024, not a typical time for new starts. I am fighting my need for order and convention, attempting to accept that it is fine to start at any time other than week 1 of January. After all, these numbers are arbritrary and there are other calendars in which October doesn’t even exist, or New Year moves according to lunar cycles. In the Aztec calendar it is Day Ocelotl (Jaguar) which seems a great day to start something new.

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An unpalatable truth

Posted on October 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

The NHS can be a challenging place to work, particularly because it is so hard to change. When I see a problem I want to fix it, and that is just not the pace at which the NHS works! A problem I am confronted with several times a day is NHS food. The food we serve to NHS patients and staff is nothing less than a disgrace. It does not align with the best evidence on how to use nutrition to support health and recovery; many meals eaten by thousands of patients in NHS beds today will have contributed to the very problems making them sick. This is before we even consider the contribution that the food system makes to the climate crisis, or the lack of compassion shown towards sentient animals with whom we share this planet.

Nutritious plant-based meals served in New York Hospitals

Over the last few years I have dedicated an increasing amount of time to bringing attention to the urgent task of changing our food system. In this work I stand alongside my colleague Dr Shireen Kassam who is both an ally and an inspiration. It’s rare to find a kindred spirit who is excited and enraged by the same things as I am: Shireen is that rarity. As we get closer to the launch of our campaign Plants First Healthcare, we wrote for BMJ Leader, making the case that it is high time healthcare organisations led by example in the food we serve to staff and patients.

Why are hospitals, places people rely on to restore their health, serving food that makes them sick?

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Energy poverty can be lethal

Posted on October 6, 2024 | Leave a comment

In advance of the recent MPs vote to withdraw the Winter Fuel Allowance from many pensioners, I wrote for The Metro, on the health impacts of energy poverty. Below is the published article, also available on The Metro online.

For those of us working in the NHS, worries about winter start earlier every year. 

I’m a consultant who specialises in respiratory illnesses, and as the weather starts to get worse, I’m reminded of Jane, a patient in her 70s, living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and numerous other health problems who was admitted twice in a matter of weeks last winter. 

She was so scared by her energy bills that she had rationed her heating to an hour a day in one room of her poorly insulated, draughty home. It wasn’t enough. The cold left her vulnerable to infection and fighting for every breath. She didn’t know how to ask for help or where to turn to, so she ended up where so many do: in an NHS bed on my ward. 

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