Hugh van’t Hoff is a GP based in Gloucestershire. He is also Director of Facts4Life. 

The air is so clear now there are so few journeys, fewer flights. You can cut the air with a knife, it’s sharp and clean and the birds have found their full-throated voices. Covid-19 has put us in touch with our own mortality, our effect on the environment. The news is crammed full of data, opinions, trust and distrust. We are all thinking like armchair doctors. The tests are so frustrating, the answers so unclear. It strikes me there’s a lot that needs explaining, a lot that’s misunderstood.

Continue reading “Rethinking ‘Rethinking Medicine’: knowledge, power and paternalism” →

Justin Hayes is a GP working in South London. He was involved in the development of the ‘Advance care planning by phone or video’ resource discussed in this blog.

Since Covid-19 took hold, end-of-life decision-making has become an unavoidable subject. Issues of end-of-life care are being covered in the media like never before, with varying degrees of accuracy and sensationalism. This new attention has sparked understandable fears amongst the public that doctors may be making sweeping decisions about whether certain groups of people receive life-saving treatment or not. Many people are concerned that they have no say in life and death decisions that are currently being made on a seemingly arbitrary basis.

Continue reading “Getting ‘the conversation’ right during Covid-19” →