Dr John Firth

I've been a doctor for over 40 years, lucky to have worked in places where I've learned from and worked with excellent people, been involved in my early career in great medical research, and I’ve been able to write about and implement wonderful medical advances. Over this time society has changed a lot: we have higher expectations of life than our parents and grandparents did; we’re less deferential to authorities, less likely to accept it when things don’t work out well and more likely to look for someone to blame. The way that medicine is practised has changed as a consequence, much for the better but some things for the worse. Mulling these things over led me to write a novel, ‘Kind & Sensible’, in addition to my continued writing and editing of the ‘Oxford Textbook of Medicine’, the standard medical reference.