The Cure for Good Intentions : A Doctor's Story

'When I was twenty-eight I trained as a doctor. Initially everyone was interested. Amazing! people said, when I told them. What made you do that? I couldn't find a short answer. Sometimes I said, "I had a revelation on a beach." It was partly true'The Cure for Good Intentions is about a life-changing decision.Sophie gave up her job as an editor at a prestigious literary magazine and put herself through medical school and hospital training before eventually becoming a GP.From peaceful office days spent writing tactful comments on manuscripts she entered a world that spoke an entirely different language.She was now inside scenes familiar from television and books - long corridors, busy wards, stern consultants, anxious patients - but what was her part in it all?Back in the community as a brand-new GP, the same question grew ever more pressing. This is a book about how a doctor is made: it asks what a doctor does, and what a doctor is.What signifies a doctor: a caring-yet-brisk bedside manner?A mode of dress? A stethoscope? A firm way with a prescription pad? What is empathy, and what does it achieve? How do we deal with pain, our own and other people's?The Cure is an outsider's look at the inside of a profession that has never been so scrutinised, or so misunderstood.