The Dog Comes With The Practice - Expanded Second Edition

This expanded second edition adds ten new chapters, including end -of-life decisions, the ethics of informed refusal and criminal abortion.“Tom Baskett’s The Dog Comes With The Practice is a memoir that is in turns both deeply touching and laugh-out-loud funny. He recalls his early years working as a junior hospital doctor and as a locum general practitioner in Northern Ireland in the mid 20^th century, before specializing and providing consultant obstetrical and gynaecological services in Canada’s remote Arctic communities. His writing about technical medical matters is crystal clear, his humour typically Irish and self-deprecatory, his concern for his patients as individuals and his willingness to expose his own fears and regrets shine through.

The medical equivalent of All Creatures Great and Small.

Patrick Taylor. New York Times best-selling author of the Irish Country Doctor series.

“Funny and moving stories …. If you’re tired of ‘misery lit’, read this and feel better.

This book has something to say to today’s trainees.”

“The description of life as a medical student and young doctor is authentic, told with humour and laced with direct quotes from colleagues and patients, often in the colourful Belfast vernacular …. A valuable account of a system of training that is now part of history.”

“Told as a series of patient stories … in the virtual and technology-driven world we inhabit, this gentle volume reminds us that, at the core, medicine is about people.”

“It reads as tales given after dinner at the fireside … Humorous and self-deprecating, but at times serious and poignant, describing the limits of 1960s medicine. A good read, with education and thought thrown in.”