Can a sick note make you better? Dr Gavin Francis on the power of convalescence

After serious illness, busy lives mean a proper convalescence is now a rarity. But a full and proper recovery takes time. GP and writer Gavin Francis reveals why a sick note can be a powerful prescription'

While training to become a GP, Gavin Francis became ill with a severe sinus problem. In acute pain and exhausted as he waited for an operation, he chose to reduce his hours to three days a week. I persuaded myself that there was no point risking burnout for the sake of sticking to a schedule," he writes in his new book, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence. I qualified all the same, albeit a couple of months late."

This strikes me as an unusually proactive physician heal thyself" attitude for a junior doctor. But Francis's whole approach to practising medicine feels unusual. Growing up in Fife with a passion for science, he chose to study medicine because I wanted to have a job that would give me a kind of trade; all the men in my family seemed to have a trade of one sort or another." Then there's the fact that on qualification, after a year as a junior house officer, he headed off to explore the wildest parts of the world for a decade, visiting the Arctic, motorbiking across Asia to New Zealand, and working for the British Antarctic Survey.

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