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Today is a special episode of the podcast where I'm welcoming friends, leaders from all sorts of branches of healthcare to share a book that means something to them about leadership.

We would like to dedicate this episode to the memory of Dr Jenny Vaughan who died recently. She was perhaps best known for her campaigning work with Doctors Association UK, https://www.dauk.org/ leading the learn not blame campaign and championing the concept of just culture as well as for campaigning on behalf of Mr David Sellu and Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garber. In this she was the embodiment of authentic allyship and anti-racist leadership and a role model for us all.

Some of the book choices in this episode might well be on a leadership course reading list, some probably aren't. All of them should be though I suppose it depends who's writing the list and what they mean by leadership!  I hope here we have a diversity of thought and a number of reflections on the different facets of leadership on what they mean to these wonderful people who are leaders in their own fields.

We have some classic children's fiction: The Jungle Book and Alice in Wonderland. We have a military leadership manual. We have books about psychology, about self-help, we have short stories and all sorts of others. A huge thank you to everyone who's been involved in making this episode and I hope that after you've listened you really will be in a position to take your leadership to the next level.

Partha Kar recommends The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
https://twitter.com/parthaskar

Anna Baverstock recommends Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
https://twitter.com/anna_annabav

Erin Carn-Bennett recommends Think Again by Adam Grant
https://twitter.com/erincarnbennett

Caroline Walker aka The Joyful Doctor recommends the Jeeves and Wooster series by PG Wodehouse
https://twitter.com/joyful_doctor

Evie Mensah recommends Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uche Blackstock
https://twitter.com/eveosh

Helen Blomfield recommends Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux
https://twitter.com/helenblomfield8

Nicola Fisher recommends Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
https://twitter.com/NicolaFisherRN

Dave Hindmarsh recommends Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet
https://twitter.com/GP_Templates

Margaret Ikpoh recommends Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
https://twitter.com/docmagsy

Claire McKie recommends The Promise that Changes Everything by Nancy Kline
https://twitter.com/claire_mckie_

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It's a real honour today to welcome Professor Chloe Orkin to Bedside Reading . Chloe  is a researcher, an HIV specialist, a doctor, and an unwell woman and we talk about what that means in the context of Eleanor Cleghorn's brilliant book Unwell Women: a journey through medicine and myth in a man-made world. We talk about feminism, we talk about medical heroes,  we talk about epistemic, testimonial and hermaneutic injustice . I've had a brilliant time talking to Chloe and she has really really made me think even more than I have done after reading Unwell Women. I really hope you'll enjoy our conversation today.

Follow Chloe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/profchloeorkin

Chloe is the immediate past president of https://www.medicalwomensfederation.org.uk/

We mention an article Chloe wrote which had a big impact on my thinking, read it here: https://bmjleader.bmj.com/content/7/2/88

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A warm welcome today to Ben Allen, a GP from Sheffield who is here to talk to me about Amy Edmondson's second book The Right Kind of Wrong which is all about celebrating and learning from failure. Failure is something that health care professionals are not particularly good at.  It's something that we are so often afraid of. So frequently people talk about airline safety and the lessons that can be learned from aviation and those that can be translated into health care and then we wonder why aren't we doing this? What's holding us back? What do we need to know to do this better?

It's such an accessible and really good book and I love Amy Edmondson anyway so it was really interesting talking to Ben who has really embraced the idea of "Intelligent failure" in trying new new things,  not being afraid to try and to fail and always to see life as a learning experience. It was a delight to talk to him. It's a great book and I really hope you're going to enjoy listening.

Follow Ben on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/BenAllenGP

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As many regular listeners may know I absolutely love talking to authors about their books, especially healthcare professional authors and today is one of those episodes.

I am so delighted to welcome Leah Hazard to the podcast to talk about her book Womb: the inside story of where we all began which is a phenomenal book literally for anybody. If only we could get this book into the PHSE curriculum for all young people,  if only we could get all adults to read it. It is phenomenally accessible. It is scientifically so accurate and so brilliant. 

Follow Leah on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/hazard_leah or on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/leahhazard

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It's a joy today to welcome back Kirsty Shires to Bedside Reading. Kirsty and I first connected last year over Michael Rosen's Many Different Kinds of Love and she emailed me a few weeks ago to tell me about a book that she thought I ought to read which actually I had read before many years ago!  I've absolutely loved coming back to it.  Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down  is the story of a Hmong refugee family and their daughter Lia set in California in the early nineties and some of the culture clash and culture shock that exists between their understanding of their daughter's condition, epilepsy, which in their language means "the spirit catches you and you fall down" and her American doctors. It is a phenomenal read. It was wonderful to talk to Kirsty today about some of the themes from it and what we've both learned and what we've changed in our practice as a result of having read it.

One of the really big practice changing aspects for us both was discovering Arthur Klienman's eight questions which Kirsty decribes as "like ICE on steroids" and which make a HUGE difference in practice when used appropriately:
 https://thinkculturalhealth.hhs.gov/assets/pdfs/resource-library/arthur-kleinmans-eight-questions.pdf

Kirsty also recommended A Smell of Burning  by Colin Grant
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/19/a-smell-of-burning-the-story-of-epilepsy-colin-grant-review

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 I'm delighted to welcome Ellen Welch, GP and writer to today's epsiode of Bedside Reading. Ellen's book Why Can't I see my GP: the past present and future of General Practice came out in February this year and feels such a topical read with everything that's been going on at the moment with the GP contract referendum.  If you are a GP you might well enjoy it, recognise a lot of it and then hand it on to family and friends. But if you don't really understand how primary care works if you don't know why GPs always seem to be moaning about something as we are so frequently accused if you want to understand the health service better I would absolutely recommend it. It's quite a small book. It's very very accessible. And it's certainly one that I'm going to be recommending to medical students and to new GP registrars to give them a bit more context about the system in which they're training and working.

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A warm welcome today to Alan Shirley GP and Medical Educator to talk about A Fortunate Man: The story of a country doctor. The seminal John Berger and Jean Mohr book which has to a certain extent stood the test of time and has very much been the classic book mentioned when people talk about medical humanities or about books that relate to GP training.

It's not a book just for GPs though and and I really enjoyed my conversation with Alan about the elements of this book that are problematic as well as the elements which have stood the test of time and also how beautifully it sits with Polly Morland's more recent book A Fortunate Woman.

Alan and I mention a number of models/theories of the consultation and if you want to know more or have forgotten what you once knew this is a great overview https://www.essentialgptrainingbook.com/wp-content/online-resources/04%20consultation%20models.pdf

We mentioned Darren Garvey's superb book Poverty Safari  as well as Bridget Christie's comedy series "The Change" which is available on Channel 4.

As ever if you want to buy books I'd always recommend an independent bookshop, my favourite is Scarthin in Cromford and they are amazing online/by phone too:  https://scarthinbooksonline.com/

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Dr Lucy Pollock's The Book About Getting Older has got to be one of the most compassionate, wise and useful books I have read. It was a delight to be joined by Lauren Wallis, a GPST2 who has moved from being a gynaecologist with a single system focus to a most excellent generalist with a newfound enthusiasm for frailty.

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Imagine you could be rid of your sadness, your anxiety, your heartache, your fear.

Imagine you could take those feelings from others and turn them into something beautiful.

Lynx is a Grief Nurse. Kept by the Asters, a wealthy, influential family, to ensure they’re never troubled by negative emotions, she knows no other life.

When news arrives that the Asters’ eldest son is dead, Lynx does what she can to alleviate their Sorrow. As guests flock to the Asters’ private island for the wake, bringing their own secrets, lies and grief, tensions rise.

Then the bodies start to pile up.

With romance, intrigue and spectacular gothic world-building, this spellbinding debut novel is immersive and unforgettable.

I'm joined by Anna Young to discuss Angie Spoto's debut novel

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Ian Walsh is a Surgeon, psychosexual therapist, academic, musician and an alcoholic. We are talking about Ian's phenomenal book. The Belly of the Whale. It's quite hard to describe this book other than as the rawest most honest warts and all account of his recovery from addiction. There is so much to think about and I'm almost embarrassed to say how much I enjoyed reading it because it takes you to some very very dark places but it's a book I think I will come back to again and again. It is a book I have recommended endlessly to people I really hope that it ends up on reading lists for medical students, for nursing students, for doctors, for nurses, for anybody who is working with anyone who is an addict and recognising how common addiction is that's probably all of us.

Ian and I talked about the work of the Institute of Psychosexual Medicine https://www.ipm.org.uk/

Buy your copy of Ian's book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Belly-Whale-Mr-Ian-Walsh/dp/1722187344