Intensive Care: A GP, a Community & a Pandemic

(Paperback, Main)

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An Observer, New Statesman, Financial Times, Irish Times and Scotsman 2021 Non-Fiction Highlight

'Searing yet beautiful ... less a hot take that an astute manifesto for what matters most in life, as well as in medicine.' - Rachel Clarke, author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic and Your Life in My Hands

'Well written, often entertaining and occasionally deeply moving; an unmissable account of a year we will all try too hard to forget.' - The Times

'Inspiring. I can't recommend it too strongly. You will learn a lot from it, and you will find much more that is encouraging.' - Allan Massie, Scotsman

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 arrived in 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.

Reviews

'Superb ... makes clear that the revelation of this plague has been twofold: our hubris has been shattered, yet there remains a staggering human capacity for bravery, courage and endurance. Francis witnesses it daily in the kingdom of the sick. From it, he takes heart, and urges us to do the same.' - Madeleine Bunting

'Inspiring. I can't recommend it too strongly. You will learn a lot from it, and you will find much more that is encouraging.' - Allan Massie

'One of the most absorbing books - of any type - that I've had the pleasure to read ... Although this is the story of a very dark time, it is full of warmth and decency. It is a book to be savoured. Beautiful things can emerge from desperate times; this book is one of those things.' - Irish Times

'An unmissable account of a year we will try too hard to forget' - Kate Saunders

'A public service ... compelling' - New Statesman

Author Bio

Gavin Francis has worked across four continents as a surgeon, emergency physician, medical officer with the British Antarctic Survey and latterly as a GP; he has described the pandemic response of 2020-21 as the most intense period of his twenty-year career in medicine. He's the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Adventures in Human Being and Shapeshifters. He also writes for the Guardian, The Times, the London Review of Books and Granta.