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Intensive Care: A GP, a Community & Covid-19
Intensive Care is about how coronavirus emerged, spread across the world and changed all of our lives forever. But it's not, perhaps, the story you expect.
Gavin Francis is a GP who works in both urban and rural communities, splitting his time between Edinburgh and the islands of Orkney. When the pandemic ripped through our society he saw how it affected every walk of life: the anxious teenager, the isolated care home resident, the struggling furloughed worker and homeless ex-prisoner, all united by their vulnerability in the face of a global disaster. And he saw how the true cost of the virus was measured not just in infections, or deaths, or ITU beds, but in the consequences of the measures taken against it.
In this deeply personal account of nine months spent caring for a society in crisis, Francis will take you from rural village streets to local clinics and communal city stairways. And in telling this story, he reveals others: of loneliness and hope, illness and recovery, and of what we can achieve when we care for each other.
Gavin Francis is a GP who works in both urban and rural communities, splitting his time between Edinburgh and the islands of Orkney. When the pandemic ripped through our society he saw how it affected every walk of life: the anxious teenager, the isolated care home resident, the struggling furloughed worker and homeless ex-prisoner, all united by their vulnerability in the face of a global disaster. And he saw how the true cost of the virus was measured not just in infections, or deaths, or ITU beds, but in the consequences of the measures taken against it.
In this deeply personal account of nine months spent caring for a society in crisis, Francis will take you from rural village streets to local clinics and communal city stairways. And in telling this story, he reveals others: of loneliness and hope, illness and recovery, and of what we can achieve when we care for each other.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published January 7, 2021
33 people are currently reading
577 people want to read
About the author
Gavin Francis
21 books138 followersGavin Francis was born in Scotland in 1975, and has travelled widely on all seven continents. He has crossed Eurasia by motorcycle, and spent a year in Antarctica. He works as a medical doctor as well as a writer.
When travelling he is most interested in the way that places shapes the lives and stories of the people who live in them.
His first book, True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, explores the history of Europe's expansion northwards from the first Greek explorers to the Polar expeditions of the late 19th and 20th centuries. It was nominated for a William Mills Prize for Polar Books. Of it Robert Macfarlane wrote: 'a seriously accomplished first book, by a versatile and interesting writer... it is set apart by the elegance and grace of its prose, and by its abiding interest in landscapes of the mind. Francis explores not only the terrain of the far North, but also the ways in which the North has been imagined... a dense and unusual book.'
In 2011 he received a Creative Scotland Writer's Award towards the completion of a book about the year he spent living beside a colony of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. Empire Antarctica will be published by Chatto & Windus in November 2012.
When travelling he is most interested in the way that places shapes the lives and stories of the people who live in them.
His first book, True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, explores the history of Europe's expansion northwards from the first Greek explorers to the Polar expeditions of the late 19th and 20th centuries. It was nominated for a William Mills Prize for Polar Books. Of it Robert Macfarlane wrote: 'a seriously accomplished first book, by a versatile and interesting writer... it is set apart by the elegance and grace of its prose, and by its abiding interest in landscapes of the mind. Francis explores not only the terrain of the far North, but also the ways in which the North has been imagined... a dense and unusual book.'
In 2011 he received a Creative Scotland Writer's Award towards the completion of a book about the year he spent living beside a colony of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. Empire Antarctica will be published by Chatto & Windus in November 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
January 9, 2021
I finally finished a book in 2021! And it’s one with undeniable ongoing relevance. Francis, a physician who is based at an Edinburgh practice and frequently travels to the Orkney Islands for healthcare work, reflects on what he calls “the most intense months I have known in my twenty-year career.” He draws all of his chapter epigraphs from Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and journeys back through most of 2020, from the day in January when he and his colleagues received a bulletin about a “novel Wuhan coronavirus” to November, when he was finalizing the book and learned of promising vaccine trials but also a rumored third wave and winter lockdown.
In February, no one knew whether precautions would end up being an overreaction, so Francis continued normal life: attending a conference, traveling to New York City, and going to a concert, pub, and restaurant. By March he was seeing more and more suspected cases, but symptoms were variable and the criteria for getting tested and quarantining changed all the time. The UK at least seemed better off than Italy, where his in-laws were isolating. Initially it was like flu outbreaks he’d dealt with before, with the main differences being a shift to telephone consultations and the “Great Faff” of donning full PPE for home visits and trips to care homes. The new “digital first” model left him feeling detached from his patients. He had his own Covid scare in May, but a test was negative and the 48-hour bug passed.
Through his involvement in the community, Francis saw the many ways in which coronavirus was affecting different groups of people. He laments the return of mental health crises that had been under control until lockdown. Edinburgh’s homeless, many in a perilous immigration situation thanks to Brexit, were housed in vacant luxury hotels. He visited several makeshift hostels, where some residents were going through drug withdrawal, and also met longtime patients whose self-harm and suicidal ideation were worsening.
Children and the elderly were also suffering. In June, he co-authored a letter begging the Scottish education secretary to allow children to return to school. Perhaps the image that will stick with me most, though, is of the confused dementia patients he met at care homes: “there was a crushing atmosphere of sadness among the residents … [they were] not able to understand why their families no longer came to visit. How do you explain social distancing to someone who doesn’t remember where they are, sometimes even who they are?”
Francis incorporates brief histories of vaccination and the discovery of herd immunity, and visits a hospital where a vaccine trial is underway. I learned some things about COVID-19 specifically: it can be called a “viral pneumonia”; it has two phases, virological (the virus makes you unwell) and immunological (the immune system misdirects messages and the lungs get worse); and it affects the blood vessels as well as the lungs, with one in five presenting with a rash and some developing chilblains in the summer. Amazingly, as the year waned, Francis only knew three patients who had died of Covid, with many more recovered. But in August, a city that should have been bustling with festival tourists was nearly empty.
Necessarily, the book ends in the middle of things; Francis has clear eyes but a hopeful heart. While this is not the first COVID-19 book I’ve encountered (that was Duty of Care by Dominic Pimenta) and will be far from the last – next up for me will be Rachel Clarke’s Breathtaking, out at the end of this month – it is an absorbing first-hand account of a medical crisis as well as a valuable memorial of a time like no other in recent history. One of my favorite lines was “One of the few consolations of this pandemic is its grim camaraderie, a new fellowship among the fear.” Another consolation for me is reading books by medical professionals who can compassionately bridge the gap between expert opinion and everyday experience.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
In February, no one knew whether precautions would end up being an overreaction, so Francis continued normal life: attending a conference, traveling to New York City, and going to a concert, pub, and restaurant. By March he was seeing more and more suspected cases, but symptoms were variable and the criteria for getting tested and quarantining changed all the time. The UK at least seemed better off than Italy, where his in-laws were isolating. Initially it was like flu outbreaks he’d dealt with before, with the main differences being a shift to telephone consultations and the “Great Faff” of donning full PPE for home visits and trips to care homes. The new “digital first” model left him feeling detached from his patients. He had his own Covid scare in May, but a test was negative and the 48-hour bug passed.
Through his involvement in the community, Francis saw the many ways in which coronavirus was affecting different groups of people. He laments the return of mental health crises that had been under control until lockdown. Edinburgh’s homeless, many in a perilous immigration situation thanks to Brexit, were housed in vacant luxury hotels. He visited several makeshift hostels, where some residents were going through drug withdrawal, and also met longtime patients whose self-harm and suicidal ideation were worsening.
Children and the elderly were also suffering. In June, he co-authored a letter begging the Scottish education secretary to allow children to return to school. Perhaps the image that will stick with me most, though, is of the confused dementia patients he met at care homes: “there was a crushing atmosphere of sadness among the residents … [they were] not able to understand why their families no longer came to visit. How do you explain social distancing to someone who doesn’t remember where they are, sometimes even who they are?”
Francis incorporates brief histories of vaccination and the discovery of herd immunity, and visits a hospital where a vaccine trial is underway. I learned some things about COVID-19 specifically: it can be called a “viral pneumonia”; it has two phases, virological (the virus makes you unwell) and immunological (the immune system misdirects messages and the lungs get worse); and it affects the blood vessels as well as the lungs, with one in five presenting with a rash and some developing chilblains in the summer. Amazingly, as the year waned, Francis only knew three patients who had died of Covid, with many more recovered. But in August, a city that should have been bustling with festival tourists was nearly empty.
Necessarily, the book ends in the middle of things; Francis has clear eyes but a hopeful heart. While this is not the first COVID-19 book I’ve encountered (that was Duty of Care by Dominic Pimenta) and will be far from the last – next up for me will be Rachel Clarke’s Breathtaking, out at the end of this month – it is an absorbing first-hand account of a medical crisis as well as a valuable memorial of a time like no other in recent history. One of my favorite lines was “One of the few consolations of this pandemic is its grim camaraderie, a new fellowship among the fear.” Another consolation for me is reading books by medical professionals who can compassionately bridge the gap between expert opinion and everyday experience.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
January 27, 2021
An open and honest account of the life of a GP during the first part of the COVID pandemic. Given Edinburgh's place in medical history it seems apposite that we should read about the impact of the virus on a practice in Edinburgh, with the odd visit to Orkney thrown in. Francis shows the impact on a GP practice not just in terms of COVID the disease but in how the restrictions caused by it impact on the ability of GPs to deal with the general 'day to day' activity of being a GP. He takes you into corners you may not have though about - the elderly dementia patient locked down on their own on in a flat; the doorstep changes of PPE; the consultations through front doors; the hotels housing homeless patients and the difficulty of diagnosis by Zoom. He also elucidates clearly the growing mental health crisis underlying all of this. The hopeful metaphor in the book is the growth of a group of cygnets on his cycle ride to work, as the book ends the white plumage is shining through as they get ready to move on, no such happy ending for the pandemic though as the book ends in early November just as things are starting to rapidly deteriorate again and as we all now know will take a dramatic turn for the worse even as positive news on vaccinations breaks. Hopefully volume two is on the way.
January 22, 2021
I appreciated this book as an account of a GP continuing his work in spite of the frustration of telephone consultations and wearing PPE for home visits. Gavin Francis writes about the current pandemic with measured and well informed consideration with complete honesty. He is particularly concerned about the mental health 'pandemic' which will be the result of lockdown and 'long Covid'. This is a salutary read for anyone who is frustrated with difficulties contacting their surgery!
May 29, 2022
I was expecting to enjoy diving into the pandemic journey from a GP's viewpoint, having liked "Recovery". But actually I am realising this book made me angry. In spite of the somewhat detached and philosophical style, the author clearly prides himself on his empathy and compassion towards the broad range of his NHS patients, ex-convicts and homeless people and teenagers and over-80s whose quirks he remembers from treating them over many decades. He shares in his patients' pain, calls back to check on them next week, calls to confer with relatives he knows, and spontaneously accesses their hospital records when feeling worried. If I were not an NHS patient myself I might conclude that General Practice is the best ever system for community medical provision. Unfortunately I am also an NHS patient myself and I recognised very few of the details in this book - home visits? A GP remembering about someone without that person fighting through a 5-hour phone queue? In 2020? Either those patients are very lucky indeed, or the author was so selective I do not feel the majority experience reality of the pandemic made it onto these pages.
July 31, 2021
This isn't the best book written by Gavin Francis, but he has written some very good books indeed. This reflects on his experiences through the pandemic in Edinburgh and Orkney, and it's shot through with his characteristic observational skill, intelligence and humanity. I ended up with a fuller picture of one GP’s experience but also how much suffering there was and perhaps still is out there. The sections about the homeless are particularly moving.
September 27, 2023
Having worked as a GP during the first 18 months of the pandemic, I can relate to the story told in this excellent record of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected how we cared for people in the community.
I highlighted a number of sentences that struck a cord with how I felt. These are presented below.
Congratulations to Gavin Francis for writing the book that many GPs would like to have written.
Quotes
At this stage of the pandemic we were consulting for the most part on the phone, and for me those encounters felt alien, and profoundly unsatisfying. In happier days there was a sense of fellowship to my meetings with patients; on a crackling phone line, I could barely make myself understood to the anxious, ill person on the other end.
I’d been tired out by another day on the phone sifting through other people’s anxieties, deciding which ones necessitated long conversations, which needed short conversations, who I would have to bring in to review face to face, or visor to visor,
To confront face to face the undifferentiated unhappiness that has always been the core of a GP’s work, rather than trying to do it all down a telephone line.
The job of doctors and nurses in the community had been moulded and squeezed out of shape by the intense pressure of these early months of the pandemic, the months I’ve attempted to chart but, despite it all, the fundamentals of its care work remained the same: see sick people, treat disease, ease suffering.
It’s difficult enough to engage with the unique complexity of another human being’s suffering in ten or twelve minutes when sharing the same space, but on the telephone it’s near impossible.
Instead it had become a job of telephone management, of triage and guesswork, of bringing into the surgery only those with the most worrying of symptoms, or those in the deepest distress.
I highlighted a number of sentences that struck a cord with how I felt. These are presented below.
Congratulations to Gavin Francis for writing the book that many GPs would like to have written.
Quotes
At this stage of the pandemic we were consulting for the most part on the phone, and for me those encounters felt alien, and profoundly unsatisfying. In happier days there was a sense of fellowship to my meetings with patients; on a crackling phone line, I could barely make myself understood to the anxious, ill person on the other end.
I’d been tired out by another day on the phone sifting through other people’s anxieties, deciding which ones necessitated long conversations, which needed short conversations, who I would have to bring in to review face to face, or visor to visor,
To confront face to face the undifferentiated unhappiness that has always been the core of a GP’s work, rather than trying to do it all down a telephone line.
The job of doctors and nurses in the community had been moulded and squeezed out of shape by the intense pressure of these early months of the pandemic, the months I’ve attempted to chart but, despite it all, the fundamentals of its care work remained the same: see sick people, treat disease, ease suffering.
It’s difficult enough to engage with the unique complexity of another human being’s suffering in ten or twelve minutes when sharing the same space, but on the telephone it’s near impossible.
Instead it had become a job of telephone management, of triage and guesswork, of bringing into the surgery only those with the most worrying of symptoms, or those in the deepest distress.
March 20, 2025
Really enjoyed this
February 8, 2021
Read in anticipation of Wigtown Wednesday on 10th Feb - interview with the Author . A timely read with a positive message in the midst of this Covid pandemic .
September 6, 2023
A heavy yet necessary read. The Covid-19 virus is something that impacted the whole world, and whilst many of us were at home with nothing to do with our days, some people were out in the open risking their lives in order to put forward the prospect to the end of the deadly pandemic.
I found it interesting to follow Francis through a year of his life where he had to completely adapt the way he had performed his job for many years in order to enforce the greater good on public health. We see Francis go through personal difficulty as he struggles to diagnose from afar as body language can be such a good indicator into illness whilst also dealing with the outbreak of mental health issues in the UK.
Some notable aspects of the story are as follows:
- The breadth of different people that Francis encounters daily in his medical practice, with such a wide range of conditions, he must motivate himself to give each patient the enthusiasm that he could muster in the morning.
- Covid-19 completely transformed the way that we practised medicine worldwide
- " As GPs, we're taught to value the subtleties of human communication - to glean as much from what the patient doesn't say as from what they do say. As trainees, we have to submit videos of our consultations to demonstrate how carefully we attend to body language, to silences, to the way patients hold or evade eye contact. At this stage of the pandemic we were consulting for the most part on the phone and for me those encounters felt alien, and profoundly unsatisfying. In happier days, there was a sense of fellowship to my meetings with patients; on a crackling phone line, I could barely make myself understood to the anxious, ill person on the other end. Carrying out home visits in a mask, I feel like a surgeon looming over someone on the brink of anaesthetic oblivion.
- Throughout the novel, Francis reinstates that one of the only reasons that online and remote consultations worked throughout the pandemic was because the patients held a sense of familiarity for their family doctor and therefore held less fear when expressing their concerns. However, if medicine is continued in this state, he believes that weaker rapports will be built between patient and doctor and the repercussions could be drastic.
- Many pandemic type outbreaks have occurred in the past as mentioned in the book however people became idle and the government didn't sort it as they should have straight away.
- " All those years learning about personal consultation styles and now I was breaking bad news by telephone from a car parked outside of my patients house "
- At the end of the book, Francis includes an excerpt of a poem
" Your patient is your mirror: therefore look with sympathy;
Work with the faults and flaws, see the stories and the scars
replace what worn out parts can be replaced and,
when remedy cannot be found, in the last resort be kind
I thought this to be a great way to end the book as it speaks of compassion and feeling. Doctors provide a person to confide in and speak of worries, particularly GPs out in the community. It is important as a GP to listen to the patients. In one part of the story, Francis details wanting to tell a girl something on the phone yet waiting in the silence so that she is able to say what she wants to say. I learnt from this book that listening to the patient is paramount.
- Francis, as all other healthcare professionals, had to completely adapt his job role in the face of the pandemic and there is nothing to say that in the future there won't be another time when the healthcare system has to immediately flip again, so professionals must remain versatile and willing to accept change.
I found it interesting to follow Francis through a year of his life where he had to completely adapt the way he had performed his job for many years in order to enforce the greater good on public health. We see Francis go through personal difficulty as he struggles to diagnose from afar as body language can be such a good indicator into illness whilst also dealing with the outbreak of mental health issues in the UK.
Some notable aspects of the story are as follows:
- The breadth of different people that Francis encounters daily in his medical practice, with such a wide range of conditions, he must motivate himself to give each patient the enthusiasm that he could muster in the morning.
- Covid-19 completely transformed the way that we practised medicine worldwide
- " As GPs, we're taught to value the subtleties of human communication - to glean as much from what the patient doesn't say as from what they do say. As trainees, we have to submit videos of our consultations to demonstrate how carefully we attend to body language, to silences, to the way patients hold or evade eye contact. At this stage of the pandemic we were consulting for the most part on the phone and for me those encounters felt alien, and profoundly unsatisfying. In happier days, there was a sense of fellowship to my meetings with patients; on a crackling phone line, I could barely make myself understood to the anxious, ill person on the other end. Carrying out home visits in a mask, I feel like a surgeon looming over someone on the brink of anaesthetic oblivion.
- Throughout the novel, Francis reinstates that one of the only reasons that online and remote consultations worked throughout the pandemic was because the patients held a sense of familiarity for their family doctor and therefore held less fear when expressing their concerns. However, if medicine is continued in this state, he believes that weaker rapports will be built between patient and doctor and the repercussions could be drastic.
- Many pandemic type outbreaks have occurred in the past as mentioned in the book however people became idle and the government didn't sort it as they should have straight away.
- " All those years learning about personal consultation styles and now I was breaking bad news by telephone from a car parked outside of my patients house "
- At the end of the book, Francis includes an excerpt of a poem
" Your patient is your mirror: therefore look with sympathy;
Work with the faults and flaws, see the stories and the scars
replace what worn out parts can be replaced and,
when remedy cannot be found, in the last resort be kind
I thought this to be a great way to end the book as it speaks of compassion and feeling. Doctors provide a person to confide in and speak of worries, particularly GPs out in the community. It is important as a GP to listen to the patients. In one part of the story, Francis details wanting to tell a girl something on the phone yet waiting in the silence so that she is able to say what she wants to say. I learnt from this book that listening to the patient is paramount.
- Francis, as all other healthcare professionals, had to completely adapt his job role in the face of the pandemic and there is nothing to say that in the future there won't be another time when the healthcare system has to immediately flip again, so professionals must remain versatile and willing to accept change.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 5, 2022
This is a fabulous book. He has a measured way and yet kind. This guy thinks like, what we called, old fashioned family doctors in past. I think he may have been in minority in thinking of wanting to see people face to face all through but he explains why and it makes sense. Also he perhaps didn’t appreciate the NHS clap on Thursdays but I know many staff who did as it was the first time in many years that they felt valued. I don’t agree with all of his thoughts but he explains them so well it’s easy to see why he thinks these things and one could be easily persuaded to his way. i also learned a lot about a subject I thought I already understood quite well. It’s great to get things from different perspectives and simple explanations for complex things. He is magnanimous in his praise for others which, to me, reflects his humble thoughts. This is a short and well thought out book. It doesn’t have superfluous words in it and thus is ideal. For once someone, or at least their editor, that says so much and no more. Wordsmiths are rare.
March 4, 2024
I like to read a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, this is my first non-fiction read of this year.
This is a very open and honest account of the life of a GP in Edinburgh during the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Francis shows the impact it had on a GP practice not just in terms of the virus itself, but also in how the resultant restrictions caused by it impacted on the ability of GPs to deal with the general 'day-to-day' activities of being a GP.
From elderly dementia patients locked down on their own on in a flat; the doorstep changes of PPE; the consultations through front doors; the hotels housing homeless patients and the difficulty of diagnosis by online videocall.
A really fascinating and different story of the impact of the pandemic at the heart of the health sector. Well worth a read.
This is a very open and honest account of the life of a GP in Edinburgh during the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Francis shows the impact it had on a GP practice not just in terms of the virus itself, but also in how the resultant restrictions caused by it impacted on the ability of GPs to deal with the general 'day-to-day' activities of being a GP.
From elderly dementia patients locked down on their own on in a flat; the doorstep changes of PPE; the consultations through front doors; the hotels housing homeless patients and the difficulty of diagnosis by online videocall.
A really fascinating and different story of the impact of the pandemic at the heart of the health sector. Well worth a read.
April 8, 2025
'Intensive Care' is the story of the pandemic told through the eyes of an Edinburgh GP. I always enjoy Gavin Francis's writing - he writes eloquently and with lots of literary references, particular ancient Greek ones. Yet his work is really readable and not in the slightest bit pretentious. He writes travel books about the Arctic and Antarctic (he's been the doctor on the British Antarctic base) as well as accessible books with a medical theme. In this book he documents the pandemic from when he first heard about this virus that had been found in Wuhan, through the many government failings as it became apparent just how badly it was going to affect us and ends in the autumn as we were hitting the second wave. It's a fascinating read and I really enjoyed it. I'm already hoping he's going to do a sequel following the roll-out of the vaccine.
March 3, 2021
Covering the months of the first lockdown, this is a no-nonsense, clear and informative front line account of the effects of Covid in the community, and as such I think it will stand out as historically significant. I found myself drawn into the narrative, my own memories connecting and merging as the timeline unfolded. As something we've all had to live with, I found reading it truly inclusive. It is a very keenly observed, informative and compassionate description of his experiences of dealing with his colleagues, patients and the wider community throughout 2020. If you found yourself confused throughout this period, by the media hype, mixed messaging or simply lost in the information overload, give this a read.
November 1, 2025
I Started reading and got bad flashbacks of COVID-19 and thought why do this to myself but ended pleasantly with a walk through the progress of infectious diseases, research + societal attitudes and efforts towards healthcare across mental health , homelessness , prevention campaigns , end of life care , aging etc in the pandemic.
It was a nice reflective and informative read into the many faucets of life u get exposed to if ur in a varied job environment like Francis is in as a GP with many roles across giving speeches, patient care, home visits ,remote care (Antarctica!) and exposure to many talented people in so many industries.
Love books that teach you something at the end of the day…
It was a nice reflective and informative read into the many faucets of life u get exposed to if ur in a varied job environment like Francis is in as a GP with many roles across giving speeches, patient care, home visits ,remote care (Antarctica!) and exposure to many talented people in so many industries.
Love books that teach you something at the end of the day…
February 16, 2025
I nudged this over into a four star rating because he writes so well, with great clarity of thought and style. I knew his work from the LRB. And this book is a useful record of the early time of COVID-19 and the difficulties experienced by medical staff in dealing with it. The damaging impact of lockdowns is clear. He sustains faith in masks and PPE but the airborne spread of this vigorous virus is clear even at this early stage in clinical understanding. It’s also interesting that only 3 of his practice’s 4,000 patients died in the March-June wave of the pandemic. Perhaps this partly reflects how many students are on their list. Or perhaps that it was less deadly than they feared.
September 24, 2021
Honest reflections on the nature of care and the relationship between doctor and patient, from one of my favourite current authors. Thoroughly relatable for those in the medical profession, but accessible and interesting for those with no medical experience. I suspect this is a book I will go back to for another read in years to come as we look back on the multitude of effects of Covid-19 on our societies, to ponder the experience of those on the frontline when the pandemic first broke things open.
December 4, 2021
A very interesting book. Worth reading for many reason, one is that we realize how much has been learned during the first year and a half of the Covid19 pandemic. And how little was known from the beginning. Ans what an effort many people made, not only NHS staff. But also that many unwise decisions were made, mainly from “the top”. It also made me realize how lucky I am to have lived in a country that didn’t go into total lockdown. Francis emphasizes the enormous mental health problems that the pandemic and trying to cope with it, has resulted in.
March 17, 2022
A very well written book. Gives insight into the coronavirus pandemic in Scotland from the point of view of an Edinburgh-based GP. I cannot recommend this read enough. I especially enjoyed the parts where the history of viruses (and the history of hospitals and infirmaries of Edinburgh) is touched upon. I enjoyed reading the stories included of some of the patients too. Highly recommend reading this book. It will be getting kept in my bookshelf and I will probably likely read it again at some stage in the future.
July 21, 2021
I'd have thought I'd had enough of COVID by now but this was a good read. Suitable for those with little or no medical knowledge, it is well written and gives an insight into what was happening in primary care during the start of the pandemic. Francis has had an interesting career and I'll probably look into some of his other books, he also used passages from Dafoe's 'Journal of the Plague Year' which I'm going to try to find now.
January 19, 2025
Dr. Gavin Francis' write-up of the first several months of COVID-19 as seen through the eyes of a GP.
I've been looking for nonfiction about the pandemic through a lens that isn't American and this one fit the bill with Scotland. It was well-written and informational and brought back those tense months of uncertainty and worry. Seeing the phrases 'the new normal' and 'flattening the curve' made me flinch.
I've been looking for nonfiction about the pandemic through a lens that isn't American and this one fit the bill with Scotland. It was well-written and informational and brought back those tense months of uncertainty and worry. Seeing the phrases 'the new normal' and 'flattening the curve' made me flinch.
October 19, 2021
Very beautifully written account of the Covid 19 pandemic from a GP. For me, working in general practice, it grew a little tiresome. Ongoing descriptions and accounts of something not too long ago. May be a lot more interesting to those who work in other areas or who are not working in healthcare. Stunning writing though, I can’t fault that. And would likely be enjoyed by many
March 3, 2022
A super book about the Covid 19 pandemic written by a GP. It successfully hi-lights the difficulties that GPs have faced. It was quite surreal reading this book. At many times I found myself thinking …. “ gosh, that really happened.” I’d certainly forgotten a lot of things that happened in this journey of the past two years. The quotes from Defoe’s book about the plague were eerily true.
July 25, 2024
Wider-ranging and thoughtful of the account of the first year of Covid. Francis as a GP had a broader view of how Covid affected the whole of society than the specialists whose books I've read before. He was prescient about long Covid and the negative effects of lockdown, despite acknowledging that stopping the spread had to take precedence.
October 23, 2024
We all remember Covid 19. My personal experience was being in isolation with my husband and home care workers (wonderful people!) and a quite mild case a year and a half after the first outbreak (thank you, vaccines!) This book is by a doctor in Scotland, gripping, informative, inspirational. Thank you, health workers in the entire world.
January 27, 2021
Painful to read what my former colleagues in General Practice are having to cope with in this horrible pandemic. And it only covers up to the summer so the winter peak looms horrifyingly. A tough read but real.
February 15, 2022
Excellent. I like Gavin Francis. He writes well and tells a good story and manages an excellent mix of the personal and specific vs the professional and general. Talks about Orkney as well which obviously connects with me.
March 13, 2022
Great insight from a different view
Liked how open and truthful it has been. Showing how other medical fields have been impacted and have faced change to over come the issues they faced to keep patients safe within the hard times we have all faced
Liked how open and truthful it has been. Showing how other medical fields have been impacted and have faced change to over come the issues they faced to keep patients safe within the hard times we have all faced
April 29, 2025
I loved this. Although it was very jarring to delve back into a time that we’ve all collectively tried so hard to move past. Francis tells stories of perseverance, love, kindness, and change. It sorta made me wish I had gone to medical school
August 7, 2021
Very interesting indeed, and well-written.
January 30, 2022
Loved this book, especially in the midst of party gate it was a good reminder of what we have all sacrificed over the last 2 years.
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