Aftershock

I'd like to dedicate today's episode of Bedside Reading to Corporal Hugh Cunningham of the Royal Engineers.  Hugh died in 2009 as a result of PTSD. And as I read Matthew Green's Aftershock: the Untold Story of Surviving Peace, I thought a lot about him and his family, as well as more widely about other military veterans affected by PTSD.

I've really enjoyed my conversation with Manchester Portfolio GP Zalan Alam  today. It is such an important book. I'm not going to lie and say I really enjoyed it. I didn't. I found it an incredibly difficult read. But it is a very, very important book about a subject which we really are not talking enough about.And I really do think this is a book that everybody and anybody who's working anywhere in the health service should be picking up

Aftershock is a book about PTSD, it's a book about military veterans, about what we are doing and sadly not doing to support them. I recognise that a lot has happened in the 10 years since the book was published so perhaps things are better than they were then. I'm not sure and I don't think we can be complacent and I don't think we can think enough about this incredibly vulnerable group of patients.

It's a deservedly emotional and tough read, but we do really need to be thinking about this a lot more and we really need to be doing better.

If you want your practice to become a RCGP Veteran Friendly Practice find out more here https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/course/view.php?id=803

It may help to signpost patients to Veteran's Gateway
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/find-support-for-veterans-and-their-families

Zalan also recommends http://www.overcoming.co.uk