Why Are Doctors So Miserable?

Professor Graham Easton gives a lecture at Apothecaries' Hall exploring why hostility arises between doctors and patients in a pressured NHS.

Professor Graham Easton examines how anger, resentment and hate can develop in clinical encounters within an increasingly strained NHS, drawing on Freud's account of the origins of hate and contemporary studies of hostility in healthcare. He asks how doctors might protect compassion at the heart of practice and whether a clearer ethical frame, in the spirit of John Locke, could help doctors and patients recognise each other's humanity. Easton is Honorary Professor of Clinical Communication Skills at Queen Mary University of London, a GP of 30 years' experience and a former BBC journalist.