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Have you ever suffered from imposter syndrome? I think most healthcare professionals have done at some point during their lives. Today's book is one which seeks to address many of the factors that influence that. Though interestingly, the writer Tara Moore doesn't ever use the phrase "imposter syndrome".

I'm here today with Sam Powell to talk about Playing Big by Tara Moore. This is a really accessible leadership book, thinking about why women often "play small",
why they don't necessarily push themselves forward, why they let their inner critic sabotage the amazing ideas that they've got and things that they want to do.

It is book filled with lots and lots of practical wisdom, which I have thoroughly enjoyed talking about.

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Regular listeners may remember that I always say that I don't like fantasy and also how excited that I get when I am able to talk to an author. So I'm delighted today to welcome Joe Moore to Bedside Reading to talk about his young adult novel, which is called Blue Suns and Skyshine.

It's quite a difficult book to categorise. And I think we've decided that it's magic realism, though Joe's decided that he'd quite like to invent a completely new genre, which is called magical realism thriller and maybe it's that as well!!

This story is a quest. It's a coming of age story. A adolescent boy is left a series of letters by his grandfather, which lead him on a magical mystery tour around the British Isles, ostensibly to scatter his granddad's ashes in a place that is special to his granddad and unknown to young David. There is a wonderful cast of characters that we meet along the way. It's a really, really interesting intriguing entertaining novel which in spite of not being my usual sort of book to read I have thoroughly enjoyed and I've really enjoyed talking to Joe about it today

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It's a huge pleasure to welcome the brilliant Becky Platt to Bedside Reading this week. We're talking about Needle by Patrice Lawrence.  Becky is an ACP in paediatric emergency medicine in London. She's also part of the exec for Don't Forget the Bubbles, an amazing open access medical education organisation. https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/


Becky's compassion, her willingness to see young people as themselves, to be thinking about things from other people's perspectives, and to be doing the right thing by young people, even when that is difficult.or not the easiest option, really shone through in our conversation today about Patrice Lawrence's brilliant short novel, Needle.

Becky is an incredible storyteller in her own right. Here's a link  to her brilliant TED Talk, which is all about providing love and compassion in the emergency department.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psdgiqsacdc

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A very warm welcome today to retired paediatrician, Dr Harry Stone, who is here today to talk about his memoir, Trust Me, I'm Exhausted, How Not to Train a Doctor.

This is a really engaging medical memoir, one framed by an admission as a patient to the hospital that retired Dr Stone worked in. As he lies in a hospital bed, before he lies in a hospital bed, as he lies on a trolley, as he experiences some of the most challenging care that the NHS is able to offer in corridors, in overpopulated wards, understaffed situations, he reflects on his own journey as a doctor, his training as a medical student, his junior doctor years.

Harry reflects on the changes that he saw through a long career in the NHS and thinks about some of his experiences as a patient and as a doctor and how being a doctor who is also a patient can really frame our thinking, change it and challenge it It's a really accessible book which I enjoyed reading and it's been great to talk to Dr Stone today.

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I'm really delighted today to welcome Scott Weingart to  Bedside Reading. Scott is an emergency critical care physician from New York and  the host of the EMCrit blog and podcast https://emcrit.org/


We are today talking about Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg. This is such a brilliant accessible book which has really got me thinking a lot about what we need, how important bringing our own feelings into a conversation are, but the importance of owning those feelings, observing what is going on, being responsible only for ourselves, and recognising that when we choose to do something, rather than feel compelled to do it, everything is so much better. I have loved rediscovering this book, and it has been absolutely fantastic to talk about it, with Scott.

EMCrit is on Bluesky @emcrit.bsky.social,
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/emcrit and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emcrit

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A very warm welcome today to midwife and educator Suzanne Crozier. We are talking about a book called The Midwife by Tricia Cresswell, which is an absolutely brilliant historical fiction novel, which Suzanne and I both enjoyed enormously for some similar and some different reasons.


The Midwife is set in rural Northumberland and in Victorian London. And it's one of those brilliant books with dual narratives, with two wonderful protagonists. It keeps you guessing, and makes you think. There are so many themes in here around public health, gender, health, status, community, poverty. It's an absolutely cracking read and I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to Suzanne.

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I'm really pleased today to be welcoming Georgia Vine to Bedside Reading. Georgia is an OT and is the author of Occupational Therapy, Disability Activism and Me, Challenging Ableism in Healthcare, which is a bit of a mouthful of a title for a very slim and absolutely brilliant, brilliant book.


Georgia is an OT, she is an educator at the University of Huddersfield and she also is disabled. She has cerebral palsy and this book is based on her own experiences through the education system, higher education, occupational therapy training, and the enormous hurdles which she had to leap over in order to become registered with the health professionals regulatory body, and which absolutely astonished me because I thought that the health service might have moved on somewhat in its ableist attitudes. 

Georgia's blog is here https://notsoterriblepalsy.com/

Georgia reassures me during the course of the podcast that perhaps things have got better. I really hope they have. and with activists like her flying the flag, perhaps the world of healthcare is going to become even better at supporting students and staff who have disabilities, but also have so much to offer and so much insight into the system.

Georgia is obviously incredibly talented. She is so, so wise and insightful drawing on her own experiences and experiences beyond what you might expect somebody in their 20s to have experienced, presumably as a result of her own disability. 

I absolutely love the book. It's really challenged me as an educator. It's really challenged me as a doctor and in a good way and to really, really think about what people can do and to start adopting a much, much more strengths-based framework in everything that I do in supporting my learners. So I'm hugely grateful to Georgia for writing it, and it was a real pleasure to talk to her about it.

Find Georgia on instagram here https://www.instagram.com/notsoterriblepalsy

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I'm here today with Laura Spells to talk about a book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. And we are thinking about Gen Z in particular and the generation behind that, the younger children. We're thinking about smartphone use. We're thinking about the effect that phones and social media have on developing brains. The move that has happened in the world from play-based to a phone-based childhood and what we're losing in that and what we're gaining in terms of anxiety, anxiety, alterations in social social skills, children being less able to take physical risks, less able to resolve conflict.

I felt quite conflicted about reading the book because I thought that Jonathan Haidt was going to be very anti-technology and was going to be telling everybody to get rid of their phones. And actually the message is incredibly compelling, but much more nuanced than that. It is a really good read and I have absolutely loved exploring some of the themes with Laura.

Resources for parents: 

• Smartphone free childhood;  https://smartphonefreechildhood.org; the campaign hub! Provides links to all the evidence to all the harms there are linked with phone use. 
• SFC parent pact; https://parentpact.smartphonefreechildhood.org/
• The anxious Generation; https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/; Lots of further information from the book - all the graphs, resources and additional material. 
• Jonathan Haidt You tube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOf0v_ZYfU9_KlGn77h49; Tons of brilliant videos of him talking on here
• Feel better, live more Dr Ranjan Chaterjee podcast episode talking to Jonathan Haidt; https://drchatterjee.com/how-smartphones-are-rewiring-our-brains-why-social-media-is-eradicating-childhood-the-truth-about-the-mental-health-epidemic-with-jonathan-haidt/
• Let Grow Project; https://letgrow.org/; Ideas to help parents let go of their children with confidence 
• The healthy selfie;  https://thehealthyselfie.co.uk/?srsltid=AfmBOoq9PZA1KQPogR59HR1zbJovmLmkgy_kgD4Bp1dbkTn7gXvLGMzt; fantastic book full of practical tips for helping your child develop a healthy relationship with their phone and themselves 

Resources to point headteachers to: 

• Smartphone free schools; https://smartphonefreeschools.co.uk/; All the evidence behind the need to go fully smartphone free, including success stories from headteachers who have done this. 
• Sophie Windosr presenting a fantastic speech on the need for schools to reduce their invading Edtech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6nucKFK88
• PAPAYA (Parents Against Phone Addiction in Young Adolescents); https://www.papayaparents.com/; amazing charity delivering parent and child workshops about phone addiction. If you look closely in Meet the Teamhttps://www.papayaparents.com/meettheteam you may see a familiar face 

Resources for Health Professionals: 

• Health Professionals for safer screens;

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It is a great pleasure today to re-release an episode from back in season 7 to celebrate the paperback edition of to Jane Campbell’s novel “Interpretations of Love” which was published on 5th June 

Jane joined me to talk about her first novel, Interpretations of Love.  Regular listeners may know that I've talked about one of Jane's books before, which is a short story collection called Cat Brushing, which I absolutely loved. Jane was a group analyst and then became a writer in her late 70s, publishing her first book in her 80s and I think she's a real inspiration that it's never too late to start writing but that also to remember that as we interact with people and as we work with them we will collect stories and we will get a better understanding of what a narrative is and different people's perspectives and that probably actually makes people better writers. It was a real joy talking to Jane and I'm really hoping you're going to enjoy our conversation.

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Welcome to season 10 of Bedside Reading and what a series I've got lined up for you this time around! I am delighted to be launching today with two very special guests, Debbie Hicks and Gemma Jolly from The Reading Agency.

The Reading Agency is an absolutely wonderful charity and their Reading Well "Books on Prescription" scheme is absolutely fantastic. If you don't know about it already, there's plenty in the show notes to tell you about it and we will be talking about it during today's episode. 

https://readingagency.org.uk/

We are here today to talk about three different and absolutely brilliant books that the Reading Agency recommend on their Reading Well scheme. Frankie's World by Aoife Dooley, Slow Puncture, Living Well with Dementia by Pete Berry and Deb Bunt, and Boy with a Topknot by Satnam Sanghera