A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story - The Top Ten Bestseller, Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize

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This is no rural Call the Midwife, but a superb look at one woman making a difference… 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. The Sunday Times Insightful, moving … instructive when so many practices are in crisis. A Times Audiobook of the Year 2022 As author Polly Morland was cleaning her mother's library she came across a misplaced book. It was, "A Fortunate Man" (1967) by John Berger, which was about a country doctor who practiced in her own community some five decades before. The book is about the doctor who replaced the Fortunate Man, who herself was inspired to pursue family medicine by the same book when she was a medical student two decades earlier.

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

Wendy Moore, TLS Polly Morland is a journalist and film-maker with a kindly, dramatic writing style and a feel for the human story . . . This book deepens our understanding of the life and thoughts of a modern doctor, and the modern NHS, and it expands movingly to chronicle a community and a landscape – “the valley” itself is a defining feature of people’s lives. It was, even so, very hard to take the decision to give up the practice and the patients to which she has devoted her working life – she plans to work fewer hours as a locum. One factor, she recalls, was reading about the Surrey GP Gail Milligan, who took her own life in July aged 47. Milligan’s husband, Chris, described to the medical press how his wife had become overwhelmed by the 24-hour demands of her job. “Her mind was constantly on work. And she felt guilty for stepping away. She became a shadowy figure in our lives. She was at work for 12 to 14 hours, and when she got home she was working again.” Rutter is the mother of two teenage children. “When I read that,” she says, “It really hit me: I’m working those hours too.” Revisiting Berger’s story after half a century of seismic change, both in our society and in the ways in which medicine is practiced, A Fortunate Woman sheds light on what it means to be a doctor in today’s complex and challenging world. Interweaving the doctor’s story with those of her patients, reflecting on the relationship between landscape and community, and upon the wider role of medicine in society, a unique portrait of a twenty-first century family doctor emerges. 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 I only realised that Polly Morland wrote ‘The Society of Timid Souls’ which I absolutely loved when I got the Fortunate Woman home. It was one of the few books that made it to my new book shelves when I moved house. Her second book is no less compelling or beautiful. A Fortunate Woman is a portrait of a dedicated GP who has been rooted in her village community for decades. She’s the successor to a more eccentric doctor who’s life was detailed in another book written decades ago called ‘A fortunate man’ It’s makes the case for continuity of care, the quiet joy of community and how neighbourliness enriches our lives. Vivid case studies of the patients and residents in the community are interspersed among beautiful and poignant nature writing.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. Contains a profound message for the future at a critical moment for general practice and us all' - Wendy Moore, TLS This focus on the whole person, while valuable in all medical disciplines, is bread-and-butter work for GPs. Their role as the keeper of patients’ stories is what most of them love about their job, or what they used to. Because the world has turned, and with it the dynamics of primary care. Few of us attending the doctors’ surgery these days expect to see the same GP twice. We don’t know our doctors like we used to, and they don’t know us, a situation only compounded by Covid and the default to remote consultation. Shared stories have, in many cases, given way to medical transactions. As patient numbers have risen, speed of access to a doctor – any doctor – has become the overriding priority This book deepens our understanding of the life and thoughts of a modern doctor, and the modern NHS, and it expands movingly to chronicle a community and a landscape – “the valley” itself is a defining feature of people’s lives. It explores the choices the doctor made in her young life, and the difficulties, decisions, risk assessments, ethical questions and occasional spells of anguish that make up a GP’s normal day, as well as the jokes, tea and levity. There are farmers so stoical they can go on calving for ten days despite a broken femur, babies with earache, transgender teenagers, bewildered elders, blood and, eventually, Covid. All her patients seem to agree their doctor is “a good listener”.

A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story Kindle Edition A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story Kindle Edition

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.

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. 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.”