iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 13/08/2026

It was a pleasure to contribute to this @theguardian.com “The Experts” piece on what death can teach us about how to live. No-one is ever an expert on mortality, but here are my personal top 4 lessons, distilled from everything my patients have taught me as palliative care doctor…

111328

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 23/04/2026

💥💥 Tonight! 💥💥 Please join me, @drkathrynmannix.bsky.social & Sarah Perry online at 7pm discussing April's @hayfestival.bsky.social book club choice, Paul Kalanithi's wonderful "When Breath Becomes Air". Sign up is free 💙📚🩺

3228

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 31/03/2026

🧵/ The NHS is about to undergo one of the most radical – and scandalous - changes in its history. From 1st April (the public are the fools in this), GPs will be contractually obliged to seek remote “advice & guidance” from hospital clinicians, making it even harder to see an NHS specialist.

Screenshot of Times piece with headline "Millions to be denied hospital referrals in drive to cut waiting lists."

56520369

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 30/03/2026

I am incredibly honoured be giving this year’s State of the Nation Lecture at Cambridge Lit Fest on Saturday 25 April, 12pm, in the beautiful setting of the Cambridge Union. My talk is entitled: “A Kindwashed Nation? Who Counts, What Counts and Making Britain Care Again” (1/4)

48121

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 22/03/2026

It was the honour of my life to win last year’s Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction & the madly idealistic, de Beauvoir-devouring 18-year-old me I describe in the piece above would have collapsed in astonishment if she had known what was to come. Glorious recommendations in the full piece - enjoy. (2/2)

0312

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 22/03/2026

What an absolute BLAST of book this is! Pure joy from start to finish. The sheer exuberance of these rollicking, riotous, fabulous pages. Francis Spufford is a storytelling genius. Thank you for giving me so much fun. Read this book, everyone - make your life sing!

3545

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 21/03/2026

Suboptimal for writing, but superlative for love #Harley 🩷

61322

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 08/03/2026

On #IWD2026, it feels fitting to sing the praises of this extraordinary book, read beautifully by Emma Thompson. If you’ve yet to read it, please do. Gisèle Pelicot’s strength, courage & basic human decency ring out from its pages - as does the grotesque misogyny of her courtroom experience...

Cover of Gisele Pelicot's book A Hymn to Life

416944

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 08/03/2026

I’m sorry, what? How can Chelsea & Westminster Hospital’s official charity *possibly* accept a £1 million ‘donation’ - meaning, in reality, an attempt to buy public credibility - from the Sacklers? Yes, those Sacklers, whose company, Purdue Pharma, caused >800k deaths from pumping out opioids. 1/3

916380

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 28/01/2026

Delighted to join @nicolakellywrites.bsky.social in Oxford on Tues April 14th to discuss her vitally important new book, 'Anywhere But Here' - a powerful exposé of Britain’s broken asylum system & how it fails us all. Please join us if you can. Tickets £6 from @blackwells.bsky.social.

1317

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 25/01/2026

Horrified & heartbroken by the latest ICE murder in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti was an intensive care nurse & beloved son. Americans, please know how many millions of us here in the UK are sickened by Trump and his fascist thugs, and stand in solidarity with all of you resisting them 🇬🇧🇺🇸

12500129

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/12/2025

Here’s to the NHS, to its founding principles, and to the fight to remain a society whose members continue fundamentally to care about each other. And here’s to you, Dad.

1330

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/12/2025

We in Britain inhabit a society that believes, collectively, in treating patients in need - irrespective of their ability to pay. How simple and decent and profoundly kind is that? My Dad gave his heart and soul to his NHS patients because he cared. It’s why I’m a doctor today.

1384

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/12/2025

The NHS is flawed and failing, the product of decades of underfunding, understaffing, outsourcing and the leaching of funds into private ‘providers’ hands. But it is still a jewel in the UK’s crown - the embodiment of something vital and profound.

1362

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/12/2025

It struck a particular chord with people in America, whose replies were often heartbreaking. Why? I think because my message was simple, expressing gratitude to the NHS & for the fact that the one thing we never had to worry about during Dad’s illness was how we would pay for it.

2281

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/12/2025

Curled up in grief the next day, I posted a tweet of thanks to that small army, the NHS staff who had held Dad throughout those fifteen long months of the cruelties of cancer. Improbably, the tweet set off around the world, being seen some 9 million times.

1211

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/12/2025

A small army of NHS community & palliative care nurses visited Dad daily, infusing his final days with acts of quiet tenderness. (I am painfully aware of how lucky he was. I sometimes treat patients who are dying on trolleys in hospital corridors - a travesty of what a good death should be).

2301

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/12/2025

On this day eight years ago, my dearest Dad died at home of bowel cancer. His death was a good as it can possibly be - cocooned within the love of his wife, children and grandchildren, with his symptoms palliated beautifully. 🧵

529233

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 17/12/2025

I've written this open letter to Keir Starmer & @rthonwesstreeting.bsky.social because, though I am desperately worried about NHS patients over the next 5 days, I know this strike by resident doctors is a desperate act of last resort. Please read.

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…

129635

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 13/12/2025

The art of Saturday morning snoozing. Nobody does it quite like Queen Harley 🤎🐾

3832

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 11/12/2025

Such a treat to hear Philip Pullman read from The Rose Field tonight in Oxford's magnificent @bodleian.ox.ac.uk. The conversation beautifully chaired by @richove.bsky.social. Every word captivating 🌹

Philip Pullman reading from The Rose Field

72484

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 11/12/2025

Glorious to hear the Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden interview Philip Pullman tonight at @bodleian.ox.ac.uk - including this priceless anecdote about some exceptional timing from Philip’s recent anaesthetist on the small matter of Dust … 💉🩺🤣

1465

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 28/11/2025

“We thank the committee for this report – we remain committed to transforming palliative and end of life care through our 10-Year Health Plan.” I’ve read the NHS 10-year plan cover to cover. It’s 171 pages long. Guess how many times the words “palliative care” appear? Once.

13410

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 28/11/2025

For anyone who cares about ensuring their loved ones can die with comfort & dignity, it makes for singularly depressing reading – key findings summarised in pics below. But perhaps most depressing of all is the government’s response to the report, this glib one-liner from a spokesperson:

1134

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 28/11/2025

🧵/ Today a damning parliamentary report on the state of palliative care services in England was published. Services are patchy, underfunded & “ill-equipped” to address end-of-life needs. Bereavement support is “frequently inaccessible. The palliative care workforce is in a “critical” situation”.

510062

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 23/11/2025

But the obvious lesson to learn is this. When weighing how to act - & even if your group of Downing Street decision-makers is predominantly middle class white men - consider EVERYONE. Including the vulnerable. The voiceless. The overlooked. The people who don't look or sound like you.

216141

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 23/11/2025

Herd impunity is right. The faux handwringing now from certain politicians & pundits now - as though, somehow, anyone who wanted to prevent catastrophic loss of life through lockdown didn't care about the enormity of closing schools & businesses. Every decision was freighted with difficulty...

312835

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 19/11/2025

Tomorrow is a hugely important day. At 4pm, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry will publish its report into the UK’s pandemic decision-making & political governance. I dearly hope our political leaders & decision-makers will listen, learn &, above all, act on the findings. Because there will be a next time.

B&W photo of two hospital staff in PPE hugging

518883

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 14/11/2025

Huge thanks to Rob Delaney, the Kiln Theatre & @intelligence2.bsky.social for last night’s conversation about love, grief, hope, loss, altruism & The Story of a Heart. We spoke in front of Max’s parents, Emma & Paul, and Keira’s sisters, Katelyn & Keely – what an honour to have them all there 🧡

3465

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 11/11/2025

"The hard truth about underfunding palliative care is that people who are at their most vulnerable – the dying – suffer more pain, more indignity, less choice & less autonomy than they might have." Incredibly, only 30% of hospice care is NHS funded. Pls read my piece in today’s @theguardian.com.

Photo of Rachel’s piece in print, link to online version in next post

214759

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 29/10/2025

Just disgusting from 3p Lee - who wants to stigmatise, shame and risk the lives of people with disabilities. Truly gutter politics.

Times headline about MP Lee Anderson wanting to force people with disabilities to use 3 wheeler cars via the Motolity scheme.

2228791

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 27/10/2025

Lab in surf and seals in sea. Could anything be more joyful? Harley goes wild in Norfolk 💚🐕🐟

2261629

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 27/10/2025

Hugely looking forward to discussing UK maternity care, women's bodies, birth trauma & how we make things better for women with two deeply courageous campaigners & authors, former MP Theo Clarke & NHS midwife @leahhazard.bsky.social. 📆 Sun 9 Nov, 10.30am 📍 Stroud 🎟️ @stroudbookfestival.bsky.social

1378

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 26/10/2025

Of course she has. The small matter of owing £122 million to UK taxpayers for her disgusting profiteering in a global pandemic means nothing to Michelle Mone. NHS staff died in my hospital from the Covid they caught there - her dodgy PPE racket was vile.

401192510

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 23/10/2025

Hospital medicine in perfect pocket canine form today 💙💙💙🐕🐕🐕

1327920

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 22/10/2025

Absolutely cannot wait to join Rob Delaney to discuss our books & what The Story of a Heart tells us about compassion, care, medical innovation & the NHS 🫀💗🩺 Thank you @intelligence2.bsky.social for arranging this dream conversation. Please join us! 📆 13 Nov 📍 Kiln Theatre, London ⏰ 7pm

07315

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 04/10/2025

This is Trevor Fisher, speaking to @channel4news.bsky.social from Arthur Rank Hospice in Cambridgeshire this week. As a palliative care specialist, Trevor’s interview has devastated me. His hospice has just been told Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust is withdrawing £800k of funding. 🧵

photo of a man, Trevor fisher, in his hospice bed this week, filmed by channel 4 news

8192111

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 01/10/2025

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals. Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’. What, Michelle? 🧵

Rachel wearing very flimsy looking apron, mask and visor in NHS setting

13430181225

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 24/09/2025

He had two dying wishes: to be reunited with the dog he loved & to end his days at home, surrounded by the love of his family. Cookie, of course, was rushed to the hospital stat 😊. Then multiple teams moved heaven & earth to get oxygen, meds, carers, equipment & logistics in place at home. (2/3)

1764