This was a heart-breaking but important read. I gained a insight to what life is like in prison for those serving time and those whose job it is to treat them. It was hard to read at points as the stories are tough and its hard to even begin to imagine what it was like to live through them. This gave me a fresh perspective on what is actually happening within our prisons.

This is an amazing read. What an eye opener. Well worth a read, really well written & I would recommend it to anyone.

Dr Amanda Brown is the type of doctor we all want; one who really cares for her patients and does so without judgement.
Dr Brown documents her work very well making this book a great read.
As the book opens she is working as a GP in a standard practice. Due to a change in the way they will be paid by the NHS which will mean that she will have less time to spend with patients and need to ask a pro-forma set of questions with every person, she decides to quit the practice. What path will she take next? An offer to work at a young offenders institute seems like a good option. She documents her time here, then her move to Wormwood Scrubs and onto HMP Bronzefield (the largest female prison). Dr Brown’s book shows how compassionate she is. She deals with the reasons why people end up in prison and come to need her treatment and what they tell her. It is a great insight into prison life as well as the life of a GP. It is dark at times but also gives hope and at times is very funny.
Thanks to NetGalley for a Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
NB This review has previously been posted on NetGalley, although book still appears on shelf asking for feedback and posted on Amazon and Goodreads 29/07/19.

This was an open and honestly written memoir of the GP who decided to leave her position at her “safe practice” due to dissatisfaction with changes being introduced and after considering her future career options chose to take on a life changing post as a doctor at a young offender’s institution. The writing of this was very descriptive and informative, recounting how unsure and out of her depth she first was particularly when interacting with some of the inmates and that she had made the wrong career choice. I also thought the actual stories about her consultations and experiences with inmates were considerately written. She obviously came to love her job as she moved on to work at Wormwood Scrubs as well as HMP Bronzefield. Well worth a read in my opinion.

I really enjoy these types of books, every so often one really catches my eye and that is exactly what happened with this one.
Feeling a little poorly I didn't want to start something with a really difficult plot to follow, I needed an easy read, and that is exactly what I got.
A fascinating tale of how a GP becomes a prison dr, the daily lives behind bars, In both Men and Women's prisons. The heartache that is attached to some of these patients (prisoners) and how it's dealt with on a daily basis.
I felt there was real honesty and some of the policies ect were interesting, along with the state of some of the prisons. I know they are not supposed to be holiday camps, and I'm all for punishment, as they say, do the crime do the time, but surely everyone should be given the same health support no matter what you have done or who you are.
An interesting read, and I'll be looking out for more books like this, now I've gotten my head into them again.

Well done to DR Amanda Brown for having the guts to write a book and giving us the insight into prison life and as a prison DR.

Great book and v interesting. Would have loved to have been a doctor in another life but hated sight of blood!

This is an eye opening and compelling read which will give readers an understanding of the prison system and the medical establishment. An interesting and informative book.

As a true crime fan, this was a fascinating read, really interesting and kept me hooked throughout. Well written and easy to read.

I| am one of those people who is fascinated by prison programmes. A person who watches with intrigue as different prisons are opened to the TV world and we can have an insight inside. I’ve toured different prisons round the world, and find stories from inside bars interesting. I jumped at the chance to read and review a book based on a different part of prison life than I have previously been exposed to.

Dr. Amanda Brown has openly and interestingly shared accounts of patients, encounters, and experiences of her life as a doctor within various prisons in the UK. She came to prison medicine late, and I think her experience outside prisons and then transitioning in was really unique. My Mum is a doctor and many of the things I heard her mentioning about changing statistics and treatment methodology were echoed in Dr. Brown’s assessment of general practice and was therefore really interesting to hear.

I absolutely loved her accounts of adapting to life within prison. I found her words about passing through gates and keyed doors really interesting. She speaks with a knowing and understanding tone about how it feels to pass through prison wings as someone who is not locked up. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be in a prison for work or for detainment, but her account was real and powerful and gave me a really interesting insight to what it might be like.

One of the most interesting bits of the book was the apprehension that Dr. Brown felt regarding working in a women’s prison as opposed to a detention centre for men. She worked in some notorious prisons in the UK, yet seemed initially to find the idea of working with men preferable. Her reasonings were haunting and honest, something that carried throughout the books, and I felt a real solidarity and connection with her as she discussed her reservations and challenges as she moved from the different prisons.

Some of the tricks and tacks of the inmates, whether male or female, were ingenious. Dr. Brown educated me as the reader as she learnt, a skill in itself, which made it feel as though I was learning and becoming more worldly simply by reading her accounts. Some of the heartbreaking cases and crazy hours were equally exhilarating and exhausting to read never mind work, and I couldn’t help but admiring Dr. Brown for reinventing herself, challenging herself, and pushing herself to improve as a clinician. It is clear that the job had changed her personal life, but she negotiated this wife aplomb and accounted funny tales of sleeping bags and chocolate that were so real and disarmingly normal in a definitely not normal world.

This account was heart warming and breaking in equal measures and showed the strength within both Dr. Brown, and the UK health and prison services. It was a fascinating and eye opening read that gave a completely different account of prison life, and is a thoroughly recommended read.

I've been loving the trend for medical memoirs this past year or two, so I was very eager to read this one too. Overall it was a very easy and enjoyable read, but I did feel like it could have gone a bit deeper into the effects of working specifically in a prison environment and how Amanda was able to deal with this. An interesting book, but maybe suffers a little in comparison to others in this same genre - I wanted a bit more emotion from it. Still an interesting insight though, and I would still recommend.

I found this a fascinating and interesting read. Dr Amanda Brown left a cosy set up as local GP in a practice she set up to work firstly at a young offenders’ institution, then men’s prison, Wormwood Scrubs and then to HMP Bronzefield, where she currently works.

We hear about the people she treats, the violence, drugs, suicides, attempted suicides, self-harm etc. The real people with their own stories. There are some laugh out loud moments, interspersed with sadness as well as hope. She’s an absolute inspiration and I loved reading her story. Would recommend.

This is a fantastic book for anyone who has any interest in the prison system or social issues. Having worked in a prison myself, I could relate to many of the topics raised and discussed in the book, but feel someone who has never entered a secure establishment would find it absolutely fascinating. Dr Brown briefly discusses what led her to work in a prison and details many of the cases she has experienced. The true horrors of the damage people are capable of doing to themselves and each other is explained, along with the events that lead people to be handed out prison sentences. There are also real stories of hope within the book and you truly feel the doctor’s satisfaction with her work. I throughly enjoyed this read and hope Dr Brown writes a second instalment in the near future.

A gripping reality of what its really like in prison.
Very edgy
Enjoyed it enormously.
Never ever would I want to be in there

Absoutley amazing book and amazingly written. give an insight into a world that most people don't see or take into consideration. it is totally heartbreaking at times and will make you more conscious about how you judge.

This is a quick read and only took me a couple of hours to get through. It is an interesting and eye-opening look at prisons and the chapters from the Women’s prison were heartbreaking. However, I found the book focused a lot on how amazing Dr Brown is.

This book was definitely used to aid her ego. I also felt that a lot of it was your typical rich person thinks they're better than everyone once they spend time/help someone who doesn’t have any money. I wanted to read more about the prisoners/patients and the interesting cases. The medicine was talked about so quickly that it seemed to be more about Amanda as a person than the work she does. The last few chapters were definitely the best and I just wished the whole book was like that.

I received a copy of the ebook via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This book gave a very good insight into life as a prison doctor.. Dr Amanda Brown trained as a GP before moving to the prison sector. This account of her experiences was quite gripping at times and eye opening. It was an easy read. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

A really excellent stimulating and engaging account of the work of medical staff in prisons and the lot of many within our prison system today. Dr Brown's honesty in describing her experiences - and those of the patients she has treated "inside" was striking. As a former drugs worker and a relative of someone in prison I was pleased to see the issues around medical care while imprisoned so accurately reflected. Highly recommended

Amanda Brown was a regular loved GP in her area until a change at the practice led her to a job in a youth prison for boys aged 15-18 firstly which taught her a lot.



From diabetic patients, severe suicide attempts, young men who grew up in care and feeling lonely without a mother's love and also winning round the prison governor too Amanda has had to prove her worth as a doctor which is obvious she did her job extremely well and was a genuinely caring and interested person in all their lives, making them mostly feel at ease and show their more human side of emotions not a hard prison face all the time.



Amanda describes her life working most recently in a women's prison too where a lot of her patients have been subject to abuse, rape, violence at home etc feeling safer in prison though some have become addicted to drugs making it harder for them to get control of their lives completely. In a really open look into life working in many prisons it gave us an exclusive look into what working in that environment must be like.



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

A nice easy read, interesting to get a perspective of what a prison doctor deals with. I'm not sure it's something I could ever do myself, but I was interested to understand what a doctor has to deal with on a daily basis.

I really enjoyed this title! As someone who knows a few people in this line of work, I found the people and the stories interesting, and it was very engaging. A quick read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.