End-of-life care
19 Jun 2026
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Read moreAbout the novel
This story is about an ‘old school’ doctor, Jonathan Barber, who could not adapt as times changed. What he regards as a very mundane decision, keeping an elderly demented woman who is terminally ill comfortable and allowing her to die, leads to a court case, a hearing with the medical regulator and a disciplinary process in his own hospital.
Why I wrote this novel
A few years ago I felt I was at the stage of life where, if I was going to do something different, I needed to do it now. The alternative was carrying on doing what I was doing, but with the prospect of this eventually leading to me being carried out of the hospital on a stretcher when I ran out of gas. This did not seem appealing.
Mulling over where I was led me to thinking about where medicine was: what had changed in the time I’d been a doctor; what for the better and what for the worse. What struck me was how, alongside vast improvements in the care that medicine can provide, have come even greater increases in the expectations that patients and families have. How could I explore this? I could have approached academic colleagues with knowledge of historical surveys of patient expectations, etc etc. But I fancied doing something different, so I wrote a story about an old fashioned doctor who couldn’t change as times changed and gets into trouble.
About John
I’ve been a doctor for 45 years and am a medical consultant at Addenbrookes in Cambridge. My specialties are kidney and general medicine, so I look after many patients who are on kidney dialysis machines or have kidney transplants, and many who are brought into hospital because they’ve become acutely unwell with a wide range of medical problems. I was one of the hospital’s Deputy Medical Directors for 15 years, which means I know most of what there is to know about the tangles and troubles that patients and doctors get into, and often landed up having the difficult conversations to try and help when things had gone badly for one reason or another. Sometimes I got these conversations right and sometimes I didn’t.
A lifetime in medicine and medical writing
Let’s start a conversation
I’d be particularly interested to hear from you if you are organising and want a speaker at a book club, a literary festival, a medical meeting or a medical dinner.
