Dr Rachel Clarke

@drrachelclarke.com

44319 Followers 966 Following

Palliative care doctor 👩🏻‍⚕ Author 📚 Winner: 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 🫀 Founder: Hospice Ukraine 🇺🇦 Rep: Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander 📝 www.drrachelclarke.com

Screenshot of Times piece with headline "Millions to be denied hospital referrals in drive to cut waiting lists."
photo of cover of the book Nonesuch
Labrador and laptop on my lap
Cover of Gisele Pelicot's book A Hymn to Life
An Open Letter to Keir Starmer & Wes Streeting as NHS Resident Doctors Commence Their 5-day Strike 17/12/25 Dear both, In 2016, when junior doctors (as we were then called) went on strike against Jeremy Hunt’s reviled new contract, he deployed exactly the same tactics as you do today. He tried to divide and rule BMA leaders from their members, to turn public opinion against striking doctors, to smear us to the press at every opportunity. His favourite term of abuse was “militants”, though you favour words like “self-indulgent”, “irresponsible”, “dangerous”, “reckless,” “abandoning patients in their hour of greatest need.” Jeremy Hunt learned from his mistakes. He has spoken publicly about bitterly regretting his bullying tactics. You, on the other hand, appear to have learned nothing from 2016. You assume the worst of the young doctors out on strike today – that they care only about self-enrichment, that they don’t give a damn about their patients. You could not be more wrong. They hate striking, which is a desperate act of last resort. But what choice do they have? Today’s young doctors face something beyond ludicrous - the modern farce that is NHS doctor unemployment. You, Wes Streeting, the man responsible for NHS workforce planning, lead a system so broken that there are doctors today literally unable to find jobs in the NHS you claim to be rebuilding. What a travesty in a country so desperately short of psychiatrists, GPs, radiologists, acute medics and NHS doctors of every kind. You offer the creation of some (not enough) new training posts to striking doctors as though this is benevolent, gracious. Well it’s not. It is frankly grotesque to say, “I won’t pay you more, but I am willing to decrease (though not eradicate) the chances of you being unemployed next year.” Small wonder we’re losing resident doctors to Australia in droves. Every attack and smear you deploy against resident doctors over the next five days only exacerbates their despair. Slo…
A Labrador snoozing on the sofa!
Philip Pullman reading from The Rose Field
B&W photo of two hospital staff in PPE hugging
Rachel and Rob on stage talking
Photo of Rachel’s piece in print, link to online version in next post
Times headline about MP Lee Anderson wanting to force people with disabilities to use 3 wheeler cars via the Motolity scheme.
A video of Rachel inviting people to the event with Rob Delaney
photo of a man, Trevor fisher, in his hospice bed this week, filmed by channel 4 news
Rachel wearing very flimsy looking apron, mask and visor in NHS setting
photo of a small dog on a patient's hospital bed
On sofa with Labrador, with laptop with similar photo
a paperback copy of In Memoriam being held by Rachel
A starving Palestinian child.
Children waiting for aid, screaming
Palestinian mother holding starving small child
A mother in a tent in Gaza clasping her starving child, who appears close to death.