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

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In May, the Commons Health and Social Care Committee held an evidence session on continuity of care. They heard from Dr Jacob Lee about what it’s like to see someone in a practice that doesn’t have personal lists. “You are trying to read their notes and get a feeling for what has been happening in the past. It makes the consultation really challenging when you are looking at blood test results and letters for patients you do not know because they are split between the different GPs who are in that day. It is so inefficient and difficult to try to do a good job for that individual.” The book maps on to Berger’s by likewise offering some case histories of the kind that might feature in a TV drama. Here too the doctor drives, walks, cycles to remote cottages, to scenes of sadness and dismay, fear, stoicism and horror accidents. (All cases have been “reimagined and reconfigured” so as to retain patient confidentiality.) There are also the day-to-day, in-person, ten-minute appointments – or there were, before the pandemic. remote, wooded valley in which she lives. The book was A Fortunate Man, John Berger’s classic account of a country doctor working in the same valley more than half a century earlier. This chance discovery led Morland to the remarkable doctor who serves that valley community today, a woman whose own medical vocation was inspired by reading the very same book as a teenager. 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

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”. 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. 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 Insightful, moving … instructive when so many practices are in crisis. A Times Audiobook of the Year 2022 A really terrific book… deeply moving, engrossing and unforgettable… At a very difficult time for general practice and for the medical profession as a whole, this book comes as a most welcome affirmation of the central importance of a respectful, reciprocal relationship between doctors and patients. British Journal of General Practice

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.” Contains a profound message for the future at a critical moment for general practice and us all' - Wendy Moore, TLS Timely… compelling…[the] vital perspective of a single frontline clinician… A delicately drawn miniature. Financial Times 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. In his portrait of Dr Sassall, Berger is capable of profound insight and political analysis. However, he deliberately ignored the contributions of Sassall’s wife – although the doctor and Betty were a team. A footnote reads: “I do not attempt in this essay to discuss the role of Sassall’s wife or his children. My concern is his professional life.” Could Berger have imagined that Sassall’s 21st-century successor might be a woman? He wrote that “if his training were not so long and expensive, every mother would be happy for her son to become a doctor.” Now most GPs are daughters.

The big idea: why modern medicine can’t work without stories

I was consoled and compelled by this book’s steady gaze on healing and caring. The writing is beautiful' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater and Ghost Wall 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. I particularly enjoyed listening to the stories which I can relate to. There is a rallying call for the importance of continuity of care and the risk of losing this forever. When I chose general practice as a career it was this emphasis on continuity, families and community that appealed to me. A beautifully written book, both moving and humbling. Lissa Evans, author of Crooked Heart and Old Baggage All human life is here in this evocative portrayal of the challenges and joys of rural family doctoring in modern times. Enthralling and uplifting. James Le Fanu, author of The Rise & Fall of Modern MedicineA 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 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.

A Fortunate Woman - Polly Morland

At the college’s threescore and 10, outgoing president Martin Marshall offers a sobering assessment of how the profession is bearing up. “There has to come a point,” Marshall says, “where doctors decide, I can’t do my job any more, and then the situation will spiral out of control. I would use the term crisis: so many parts of the NHS are under such enormous pressure that they are unable to provide the personal care that patients need, unable to provide effective care, and increasingly unable to even provide safe care.” This is not your average "health worker" memoir, it is so much more. It is a meditation on place, belonging, nature and history.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 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.

A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story - Goodreads A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story - Goodreads

In the snow-bound January of 1947, a new GP arrived in “the valley”. He had served as a navy surgeon in the war, but now he was a country doctor, there to stay. Eighteen months later, each of his patients received a terse letter: “You are now part of the National Health Service, so you don’t need to pay me any more, thank you very much.” He remained for 35 years. An immersive study… Morland’s book contains a profound message for the future at a critical moment for general practice and us all. Times Literary SupplementChristina Patterson, Sunday Times The doctor's kindly, hollistic approach - she makes time to investigate her patients' social as well as physical needs - seems to evoke a lost world . . . Morland's book contains a profound message for the future at a critical moment for general practice and us all.