Rob Niven

A Life of Breath (Book 3)

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In book 1 you met the young doctor from his first day of life as a junior doctor and the senior consultant at the end of his career, struck down with Covid. Heart-warming stories, pathos and tragedy have followed during his career amidst a crumbling NHS. In book 2 we followed both his middle years and his period of hospitalisation with Covid Pneumonia, culminating in him being taken to ICU and put on a life support machine. This final story-line commences on a long and winding white road, where Jamie eventually meets a giant snowy owl called Peter, in front of the Pearly Gates. Is this his real end, or anaesthetic fuelled flash-back dreams? The reader must decide for themselves. In the parallel timeline, you follow snapshots of events that coloured his consultant career as he progressed from a junior consultant to leading one of the largest and most successful Severe Asthma Services in Europe. Will he retire in time to avoid getting himself in to political trouble, that might see him disciplined for his outspoken attacks on the modern financially-motivated management of the Health Service in the 21st century? The reader, should laugh and cry in equal measure, whilst experiencing the occasional cringe at the raw truth of Jamie's story of a career in hospital medicine. In presenting this work to the reader, the author is painfully aware that the public has perhaps fallen out of love, with hospital doctors over the last twenty years or more and he hope is to redress some of this, by showing you the heart and soul (warts and all) that shone, from a doctor dedicated to patient care. Although a novel and written as fiction, the personal events that form this book are based loosely on the skeleton of the author's medical career. Characters and specific events are fictionalised and do not represent any individual living or deceased.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Maple Publishers
• Seitenzahl: 464
• Erscheinungstermin: 21. November 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 667g
• ISBN-13: 9781835387665
• ISBN-10: 1835387667
• Artikelnr.: 75497272

Autorenporträt

Rob Niven qualified from St Andrews and Manchester Universities in Medicine. He spent most of his medical career in Manchester, with a brief sojourn in Leicester. After becoming a consultant and specialising initially in Occupational Lung Disease, he developed the first Severe Asthma Service in the North West, but against the national norm, with support from so many regional colleagues, he encouraged the development of a regional network of self-supporting colleagues, delivering care to patients with the severest forms of asthma. Some still see it as a model for the delivery of specialist care. He became known for developing or progressing a number of novel medical innovations and concepts, publishing 150 scientific medical papers, chapters and educational programmes. Later he worked with SIGN and the British Thoracic Society, to modernise the National Guidelines for the Management of Asthma. Having planned a period of easing down into retirement on a part time contract, the pandemic blocked these plans and he spent the first 15 months working full time on the front-line for respiratory admissions. Retirement to the Isle of Arran, beckoned however, from where the planned series are inspired by Colin Douglas who wrote books on medical life in the 1980s, as well as the spirituality and serenity of the island and the desire to have a new challenge. Encumbered by a late diagnosed of dyslexia, which explained much of his academic limitation, with writing being the hardest challenge. Rob considers himself one of the most fortunate souls alive, to have done a career, which he loved and to have survived long enough to have an opportunity to write about the funny, the sad and the sometimes gross reality of life in hospitals over the last forty years.