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 judge A beautifully written book about a doctor working as a general practitioner in the Wye Valley. The book focuses on the relationship between the doctor, her community and the landscape. Polly Morland’s A Fortunate Woman, however, is a totally different and in my humble opinion a much better book and inspirational for all the right reasons. At a time of a barrage of negative publicity directed towards GPs, it is a book that reveals the positive impact that a caring GP has on the lives of their patients. The GP in A Fortunate Woman works hard, but she also understands the need for self-care. She has a supportive team behind her, both at work and home, she is reflective, in touch with nature and the landscape (beautifully depicted in the book, both in words and pictures) and through walking, she reaps the therapeutic benefits of exercise and fresh air. Work gives her meaning, but she has balance. If the title seems familiar to you, it is because it is inspired by the book A Fortunate Man. Written by John Berger this book blended text and photographs to tell the story of a country GP named John Sassall working in the same valley in the Forest of Dean in the 1960s. Long considered a medical classic, students and trainees have been encouraged to read it ever since and it is said to have inspired many doctors into General Practice, including the GP in A Fortunate Woman. Guilty confession: I didn’t like it. Sassall’s evolution in the book from a narrow-minded surgeon intolerant of minor complaints to holistic, patient-centred GP is revealing but I found the prose dense, the philosophical allusions opaque and Sassall as a character obsessive, dogmatic and at times unlikeable. The doctor’s compassion and hard work is a constant reminder of her and her family’s dedication to her vocation.

A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story - The Top Ten A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story - The Top Ten

A remarkable, gripping and inspiring book that itself must surely become recommended reading for today’s trainee GPs… a gust of fresh, clear, contemporary air. Reading the Forest 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

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. Morland writes about nature and the changing landscape with such lyrical precision that her prose sometimes seems close to poetry . . . There has been no shortage in recent years of books about healthcare . . . With this gem, Morland has done something similar for general practice. Let’s just hope the policymakers listen. 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. 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 Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland - Pan Macmillan

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. 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”. 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.” This biography is as much about person and place as it is about the transformation of family medicine from the human connections of a country doctor to a monolithic public service focused on efficiencies, fiscal accountability, and key performance indicators. It's a story that mirrors a similar transformation of society at large. As a member of the community she serves, the Fortunate Doctor knows her patients as more than just reporting data, but as human beings, and all the complexities and baggage that that involves—as did the doctor who served in this place before her. It’s the boiling frog analogy,” Hodges says. “The water’s not been comfortable for a decade, but it’s now very noticeably warmer. It will soon reach a threshold where there is a collapse.”Next is a man who has recently suffered a debilitating stroke, but in a perfunctory external assessment has been declared fit for work, and so will lose his right to universal credit against the advice of the doctor and specialist. He’s not sure where to turn. Another letter is written, and while he is there, the doctor also treats him for dermatitis. A Fortunate Woman tells her compelling, true story, and how the tale of the old doctor has threaded through her own life in magical ways. Working within a community she loves, she is a rarity in contemporary medicine: a modern doctor who knows her patients inside out, the lives of this ancient, wild place entwined with her own. A compelling response to Berger’s classic account…drawn with colour and respect in Morland’s sensitive prose. The Tablet I know this not because I am a doctor myself, but because I’ve spent the last two years studying one. Over many months, I observed a remarkable female GP at work in the same rural practice portrayed in A Fortunate Man, John Berger’s classic account of a country GP in the mid 1960s. In the course of around 130,000 patient encounters over more than 20 years, she has built something that many doctors no longer enjoy: high-quality, longstanding relationships with her patients. This is a contemporary look at a rural practitioner, who serves the same Gloucestershire community as the Fortunate Man of Berger's classic, but so much more emotive and visceral. She, as her predecessor (bar one), embeds herself in the community she serves and shows rather than tells the huge benefits for both patient and clinician of this cross-pollination for their health.

A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story - The Top Ten

A beautifully written book, both moving and humbling. Lissa Evans, author of Crooked Heart and Old BaggageListening has become even more crucial. Ten-minute appointments are bad enough. Covid meant doing that behind a mask and face-visor, in scrubs made of old duvet covers. Now there is the telephone consultation. In the before-times, the doctor made a point of accompanying a patient from waiting room to consulting room, because it gave her a chance to assess their mobility and demeanour. Now there is the phone. The doctor has become adept at reading a voice, its hesitancies, emotions, evasions; 16 calls in a morning is the norm.

A Fortunate Woman | NB Medical A Fortunate Woman | NB Medical

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 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 Contains a profound message for the future at a critical moment for general practice and us all' - Wendy Moore, TLS Even before the pandemic, doctor-patient relationships were in serious trouble. A mobile population, a shortage of doctors, overwhelming workloads, the move towards part-time working (for many GPs, the only way to endure the pressures of the job), bigger practices, larger teams: all of this gnawed away at the humanity of primary care. Meanwhile, the rise of evidence-based medicine has seen a shift towards the management of health risk via a playbook of standardised interventions. While this has driven progress in the treatment of many illnesses, it’s had unintended consequences for the relationship between GPs and their patients. Precisely because the value of those relationships is difficult to render in cold, hard figures, performance metrics are skewed towards outcomes that are easier to quantify. The emphasis, and indeed the measure of success, has shifted from the individual patient to the disease.This is not your average "health worker" memoir, it is so much more. It is a meditation on place, belonging, nature and history. When Polly Morland is clearing out her mother’s house she finds a book that will lead her to a remarkable figure living on her own doorstep: the country doctor who works in the same remote, wooded valley she has lived in for many years. This doctor is a rarity in contemporary medicine – she knows her patients inside out, and their stories are deeply entwined with her own. Morland writes about nature and the changing landscape with such lyrical precision that her prose sometimes seems close to poetry’ - Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times