Gavin Francis

speaker

523 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 13 Jun

Gavin Francis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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London Review Bookshop Podcast · Gavin Francis & Philippe Sands: The Unfragile Mind · 13 Jun 2026 podcast

among the rewards of medical practice, or seeing the ways people meet, transcend, and accommodate the difficulties in their lives.

Well, I always just try and bring it back to basics and what is the function of a doctor?

to ease suffering.

I just said a patient being sufferer, we're supposed to ease suffering.

I like the word patient.

A lot of people don't like it anymore.

It's better than service user.

These people are suffering.

So that is my job.

And that is why a considerable state expense, pre-university fees, I was paid by the state to learn to do this stuff so that I could ease suffering.

It actually radically simplifies a lot of the conversation.

So though you were talking about the complexity there, by my stage in my career, I hope 20 years in, a lot of that complexity has fallen into kind of subconscious intuition.

And actually, with every consultation, which is brilliant because I'm meeting people, I'm meeting people who are...

Crofters who've hardly been off the island of Mull and I'm meeting university professors and I'm meeting young kids and then snotty kids and feverish kids and everything in between.

My question is always, how can I ease the suffering?

And sometimes it is writing a letter.

to the housing department, or writing a letter to get someone else off someone's back by saying, oh, you need to worry about this person's medical condition, or you need to accommodate somebody for this medical condition.

Sometimes it's by listening.

Sometimes it's being quite a pure technician.

So I have patients that come to me that just want the stats.

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