Repurposing: the risks and rewards of thinking again

Primary care could exploit repurposing strategies: Medical prescribing is appropriate for medical problems, but many GPs are frustrated that they can’t adequately address the social problems which afflict so many people.

Would you rather be abducted by aliens? How stress affects the body

Dr Judith Harvey on how moving house led her to the Holmes and Rahe Readjustment Scale

Dr Judith Harvey: An urgent need for public conveniences

The situation in other cities wasn’t quite so bad, but everywhere public toilets were closing. The report asked, “What would foreigners visiting London for the Olympics think?”.

You can’t eat just one: addictive ultra-processed foods

Humans don’t need to graze: our guts, like our brains, need downtime to rest and repair.

Dr Judith Harvey: Eye of newt and toe of frog?

As homo sapiens we are inclined to look down on our fellow-creatures. Can a ‘primitive’ invertebrate possibly do better than us?

It ain’t over till it’s over: a GP’s view on Covid-19

Only an incurable optimist would hope that we will be better prepared for a future pandemic.

Dr Judith Harvey: The nitty gritty

Head lice have been feeding on human scalps since before recorded history began.

Dr Judith Harvey: The Museum of Broken Relationships

The museum offers both a witness to pain and a practical way of dealing with the leftovers, a resolution which can be difficult to find.

Dr Judith Harvey: Even can-kickers need a road map

We should not have to start from here, but need a direction. Where are we heading?

Dr Judith Harvey: The shaking palsy

How can GPs better understand life for our patients with Parkinson’s?

‘Sleep knits up the ravelled sleeve of care’

Circadian rhythm disturbances undermine both sleep and nutrition, yet these fundamentals are ignored when jobs and timetables are designed.

Review: A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland

Being a GP: the romantic view.

Dr Judith Harvey: Adam Kay knows the price doctors pay

'This Is Going to Hurt' vividly illustrates the heavy price doctors and their colleagues pay to keep the NHS show on the road.

Dr Judith Harvey: Who’s speaking?

Hannah Conway’s Sound Voice investigates voice, its role in our identity and the experience of losing it.

NASGP magazine – Feb 2022

Read the NASGP magazine online today.

Dr Judith Harvey: ‘Kika & Me’ will inspire GPs

Amit Patel’s book about sight loss is a compelling story for doctors.

Dr Judith Harvey: Stakhanovism hasn’t gone away

Few remember Stakhanov's name, but Stakhanovism is preserved not only in industry but in the NHS, writes Dr Harvey.

Netflix’s ‘My Love’ is an uplifting watch for us GPs

Netflix's 'My Love' reminded me of the beauty of ageing, writes Dr Harvey.

Who’s keeping score of the health of the nation?

What if we had a single measurement for the nation’s health? Judith Harvey outlines the need for the new 'health index', currently being compiled by the ONS.

Judith Harvey: ’76 Days’ tells us candidly about the early days of the pandemic

Dr Harvey compares Hao Wu's doc with BBC and ITV accounts of how British hospitals coped

Judith Harvey: Searching for the sweet spot

Candy floss may hold the answer to the obesity crisis, Dr Harvey writes.

How do we let down the drawbridge?

We have to find a way to negotiate social distance so that staff and patients are as safe as we can manage – not only from Covid-19 but also from social isolation.

Judith Harvey: Learning to live
 with masks

Masks are uncomfortable, your glasses steam up, they muffle sounds and restrict facial expressions. It’s difficult to know if you are wearing them correctly. You can’t eat, drink or smoke wearing a mask. Or kiss.

Beware the old normal

As the government starts to ease lockdown, Judith Harvey questions what it is that we are easing ourselves back into

A lockdown diary – a journal of our times

NASGP's columnist records the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK: Ocado queues, home haircuts and a temporary reprieve from FOMO

Antimicrobial resistance: can we outrun evolution?

NASGP's columnist on life before – and possibly after – antibiotics

Podcast | Social prescribing – I’ve seen the future of 
general practice…

A partner in a North London practice was feeling burned out. The crushing target-chasing workload was no longer offset by the reward of helping patients. The BNF had no remedy for the distresses of modern life which patients were bringing into her consulting room. She, like her patients, was ground down.

Podcast | Quiet please

Podcast | Now wash your hands

Presumably a reasonably successful public health campaign, although if you are trapped like a sardine in a rush-hour tube train, you may have no alternative but to sneeze into the shoulder of the person jammed in front of you.

Podcast | Singing in the brain; music for dementia

There is currently no prospect of effective medication for dementia. Reluctantly, we prescribe agitated patients chemical coshes. But does music sooth agitation – and more?

Podcast | Eating people is wrong: Kuru and cannibalism

Recently, in Tromsø, the Arctic capital of Norway, I came across the name Carleton Gajdusek. That name took me back many years and halfway round the globe to a village in the Fore district of Papua New Guinea.

Podcast | Getting under your skin; a visit to Body Worlds and the art of plastination

How do you react to seeing a man standing, flayed of his skin, his internal organs on view, his muscles brick red, his blue eyes staring out at you? Or what about the trio posed round a table playing poker?

Fringe medicine

At the Fringe you may well be baffled but you are unlikely to be bored. With any luck you will have some laughs. But whatever you see, the buzz of Edinburgh in August is a tonic in itself.

Podcast | A viper’s nest: when venom is a man’s best friend

Did you know that captopril was derived from the venom of the deadly Brazilian pit viper? Since it went on the market in 1981 captopril and its successor ACE inhibitors have probably saved many more lives than have been lost to pit vipers.

Podcast | Understanding denial – 
a visit to the Faroe Islands

Podcast | Sin City – the redemption

Podcast | As One, 100 – launching our partnership with Health Poverty Action

Whacking moles

Podcast | No es fácil: clinical electives in Cuba

Podcast | Should GPs prescribe placebos?

Podcast | Bloody Hell – the global curse of menstruation

No risk, no reward: the NHS needs mavericks.