The Cure for Good Intentions

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