Finding Meaning, Locating Hope

Dr. Rupal Shah and Bridge Lane Group Practice

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Rupal Shah and colleagues from the Bridge Lane Group Practice in South London to the Sage Practice Network

In the midst of the pressures facing general practice, Dr Rupal (Roo) Shah and colleagues remind us that the most vital work of healthcare happens in the spaces between people.
In their paper Finding Meaning, Locating Hope, Roo and co-authors describe how meaning-making - for patients, trainees, and clinicians alike - is not an optional extra but the beating heart of good care.

Drawing on a “hermeneutic window” model, they explore how moments of connection, compassion and shared understanding can transform both clinical encounters and professional life. This approach, rooted in values and relationships rather than measurement and output, invites us to reimagine general practice as moral work: a calling to act with integrity, courage, and humanity.

Roo and her co-editor Bob Clarke extend this conversation through their podcast, Finding Meaning in Healthcare, where they explore real stories from primary care, encounters that bring moral choices to the surface and reveal the emotional texture of everyday work. Drawing on their book and the concept of the hermeneutic window, each episode invites listeners to pause and reflect on what matters to patients, and how clinicians might rediscover meaning in their work.

At a time when so much of primary care’s quiet, holding work goes unseen, this call to a “moral era” offers a compass: a reminder that meaning, care and justice are inseparable foundations for a healthier future.

At Sage, we’re gathering stories like Roo’s to keep alive the practices of meaning and connection that sustain care, even in difficult times. But how do we keep hold of meaning when the system feels unrelenting, when time is short, targets multiply and connection itself can feel like a luxury? What small gestures, moments or choices help you to re-ground in what matters most? And how might we, together, reimagine ways of working that allow meaning and care to take root again in the everyday?

Read the full paper: Finding Meaning, Locating Hope — British Journal of General Practice, 2022
Listen: Finding Meaning in Healthcare podcast
    Spotify | Apple | Amazon
Explore: Making Meaning in Healthcare (edited by Rupal Shah and Bob Clark)

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