Tessa Richards

Tessa Richards, patient and patient advocate, BMJ associate editor1 1Patient author Hospitals are stressful to be in and too often harm patients. Many acute hospital level interventions can be safely provided at home and patients welcome this option, says Tessa Richards I liked hospitals once. As a junior doctor they were my second home. Fast forward a few decades, following many hospital stays, including scary sojourns in intensive care and high dependency wards, and I now dread being in them.

Opinion BMJ 2024; 386 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q1385 Cite this as: BMJ 2024;386:q1385 Angela Coulter, chair of trustees12, Tessa Richards, patient advocate3, Ceinwen Giles, co-chief executive officer34, Sophia Walker, patient editor35 1Picker Institute Europe, UK 2Public representative 3Patient author 4Shine Cancer Support, UK 5The BMJ Giving patients real time access to their full electronic health records can help them to manage their health as effectively as possible Patients,...

Tessa Richards, associate editor12 1The BMJ 2Patient author In the quest to find a cause for “medically unexplained symptoms” patients need supportive doctors who don’t trivialise their problems, says Tessa Richards Patients with persistent, severe, but medically unexplained physical symptoms baffle and frustrate doctors. Without a diagnosis they can’t be put on established disease pathways and it’s hard to know how best to manage them.