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The Cure for Good Intentions is about a life-changing decision. Sophie Harrison gave up her job at a prestigious literary magazine to put herself through medical school before eventually becoming a GP. She was now inside scenes familiar from television and books - long corridors, busy wards, anxious patients - but what was her part in it all? This is a book about how a doctor is made, and what a doctor does. It is an outsider's look at the inside of a profession that has never been so scrutinised, nor so misunderstood.
'Switching career from editor to doctor is rare, but as Harrison says, there are a surprising number of skills that can be used in both professions . . . Yet only doctors make the life-or-death decisions that Harrison recounts grippingly and affectingly here. The medical profession has seldom been more prominent than it is now and this fine book brings its day-to-day struggles to life' Alexander Larman,
Observer'Rich in both incident and anecdote: there are startling diagnoses, poignant losses, hair-raising births, close calls. Harrison also captures with tenderness and skill the intimate interactions in between dramas' Mary Morris,
Times Literary Supplement
About the author
Sophie Harrison studied English literature at university. She wrote technical manuals and TV listings before becoming an editorial assistant and later an editor for
Granta Magazine. In 2003 she began retraining as a doctor. She has written about books for the
Sunday Times, the
New York Times, the
London Review of Books and the
Guardian. For several years she wrote a column about medicine for
FT Weekend Magazine. She is married with two children and works as a GP.
Summary
A compelling, outstandingly direct and genuine book about how a doctor is made
Foreword
A compelling, outstandingly direct and genuine book about how a doctor is made
