RCGP publishes Roger Neighbour's 'The Inner Physician'

Full details can be found on the RCGP website

The final volume of Roger Neighbour’s ‘Inner’ trilogy, The Inner Physician.

Roger explores the relationship between a doctor’s professional and private selves. He suggests that the mind of every doctor retains an untrained ‘ordinary human being’ part – their Inner Physician – which makes an important, though often neglected, contribution to medical practice.

The Inner Physician, which he calls ‘the amateur within’ or ‘the expert minus the expertise’, plays a major role in diagnosis and treatment, and is the chief source of insight, empathy and clinical acumen.

Drawing on ideas ranging from Greek philosophy to catastrophe theory and quantum mechanics, but written in an engaging easy-to-read style, The Inner Physician makes a powerful case for humanity, thoughtfulness and self-awareness as hallmarks of the effective clinician.

It will be challenging but inspiring to GPs at every career stage, and also to specialists keen to understand how their own work fits into medicine’s ‘big picture’.

Iona Heath in her Foreword calls the book ‘the distillation of (Roger Neighbour’s) extraordinarily thoughtful career in general practice. In essence it is a gentle, careful explanation of the fundamental importance of the doctor’s subjective self’.

Coming at a time when doctors are under pressure to function more as biomedical technicians than as caring professionals, The Inner Physician aims to help GPs rediscover their pride in the human aspects of their work with patients.

Readers should be comforted and inspired to have confirmed what they always knew – that they themselves are an important factor in their clinical effectiveness.

Three reasons to buy this book:

1. It will help you see medicine’s ‘big picture’ – how it fits into the sweep of history, philosophy, and the latest developments in science.

2. It’s an antidote to burnout, cynicism, disaffection and feelings of professional inferiority.

3. It will remind you of why you became a doctor in the first place, and how celebrating your own uniqueness can help you be the best possible doctor you can be.

Read a sample chapter

To celebrate the book's publication, we're offering Roger's other 'Inner' books at special member rates. Click here for more details.


ISBN Number: 9780850844115
Number of pages: 348
Publisher: RCGP
Published: February 2016