My mum tells me that when I was two years old, I would regularly go blue, particularly when I was walking my sister to school on a cold, windy day. Alongside this, I coughed incessantly. My parents took me to the doctor’s surgery multiple times, and their concerns were dismissed by the GPs, or a course of antibiotics given.

One day when I was particularly unwell, my mum was unable to get a doctor’s appointment but was able to see one of the practice nurses. The nurse identified intercostal recessions and immediately got a doctor to examine me. The doctor asked my mum how long I had been asthmatic; that was the point at which I finally received the diagnosis that linked me into a nurse-led clinic for long-term monitoring.

The nurse was Mr. Pierce*, a man who initially seemed to me scary, authoritative, and old. His voice boomed and filled his modest consulting room. He always pushed open the door to the patient waiting room with considerable energy and vigor, loudly announcing patient names, a habit which made me jump without fail.

Trusting the patient’s expertise.

Mr. Pierce was very much ahead of his time in terms of acknowledging patients’ expertise in their own health. He listened to my account of symptoms, asking my parents […]