David Jeffrey

Year 2218. For almost fifty years after their discovery, the voidoids-eerie portals into nearby star systems-have allowed the human race to expand within a 36-light-year radius from Sol, but not beyond. Exploration of Bound Space has provided valuable resources for restoring Earth's biosphere and salvaging Martian terraforming projects, and led to the discovery of Silvanus, the only other habitable planet thus far discovered. But the voidoids are starting to blink in and out of existence, threatening humanity's future. No one knows why it's happening, or who is behind it, but one thing is certain: if all the voidoids shut down, not only is humanity locked out of Bound Space forever, but it will set off a cosmological catastrophe of runaway dark energy tearing our universe apart-from atoms to stars, including all organic life. It will happen soon and will happen fast, unless someone can stop it.That someone will have to be Aiden Macallan, the reluctant hero of the Silvanus expedition. Still haunted by a traumatic past and a potentially devastating addiction, he is given command of the Domain's most powerful voidship, Sun Wolf, and tasked with a mission only he is able to accomplish-to keep the voidoids alive and prevent certain annihilation of the human race. Along with his motley hand-picked crew, Aiden sets out to investigate their only clue-the sighting of a mysterious vessel in the Alpha-2 Hydri system attempting to disrupt the system's voidoid. But someone is trying to stop them, following from the shadows, attacking at every step of the way. Someone who just might want the destruction of the voidoids to proceed. In a race against time and malevolent forces, light-years from home, the Sun Wolf is now humanity's only hope for survival.

Sun Wolf

There is a huge need for supportive mentoring among students, doctors in training and general practitioners. Mentoring is an effective way of supporting doctors and preventing problems. The author argues that all doctors should seek a mentor. Medical training involves transitions; school to university, student to junior doctor and trainee to GP. It is at these transition points that mentoring is most valuable. This book - Medical Mentoring - is a practical guide to using mentoring to help doctors with their professional development, support them when difficulties arise and prevent problems developing. If you're considering mentoring, want to adapt your approach or develop your mentoring skills, this is the book for you. This practical guide, illustrated by case stories will give prospective mentors the confidence to improve student/doctor relationships, defines the role of a medical mentor and the benefits of providing support to doctors and students, discusses reasons why medical students and doctors struggle during their careers, gives practical advice on identifying the student/doctor in difficulty, discusses what students/doctors value in a mentor, and offers a practical guide to mentoring using a clinical model. The book shows how clinical skills can be adapted effectively in mentoring, while acknowledging that mentees are not patients. This guide aims to give prospective mentors the confidence to improve student/doctor support and so will improve recruitment and retention of students and GPs, and enable doctors to deliver more effective patient care.

Supporting students, doctors in training and general practitioners

Medical Mentoring

Ewan Jeffrey

Enhancing Compassion in End-of-Life Care Through Drama explores a broad range of plays from Greek tragedy to the present day and investigates how particular theatrical dynamics help to understand complexities in the setting of end-of-life care. It examines fresh ways to interpret the action and subtext represented on the stage and find symmetries in a clinical context. Good communication forms the heart of patient-centred care and is the cornerstone of a trusting relationship between the healthcare professional and the patient. Focusing on this, the book presents inspirational ways in which healthcare professionals can improve their delivery of psychosocial and spiritual support to patients and their families. It considers a wide variety of topics including patient choice, inequality, relationships between the healthcare professional and the patient, notions of care, loss and death, grief, blame, anger, assisted suicide and euthanasia, ethical dilemmas and ethnic minority groups. It is ideal for use in a range of educational contexts, with practical ideas for workshops and summaries of key points in each chapter. This book will motivate all members of the multidisciplinary palliative care team including palliative care professionals, doctors, nurses, psychologists, spiritual advisers and social workers. Although based in the setting of palliative care, the learning points are relevant to all areas of clinical practice.

The Silent Treatment

Enhancing Compassion in End-of-life Care Through Drama

Education of healthcare professionals is the cornerstone of specialist palliative services. This book is a practical toolbox of teaching techniques. Accessible, practical and easy to use it will encourage busy clinicians to teach by increasing their confidence in their training abilities. It provides a resource of various tools and describes how to approach teaching in a team, planning, methods and evaluation. Each chapter presents a menu of tried and tested techniques and closes with examples of lesson plans. The multidisciplinary experiences of the contributors are reflected in the book and healthcare professionals working in palliative care, hospitals, hospices or the community will find it to be essential reading.

A Practical Guide

Teaching Palliative Care

It's 2217. Earth's biosphere is dying, Mars' terraforming projects are in ruin, and even the discovery of the voidoids-eerie portals into nearby star systems-has failed to uncover any other Earth-like worlds in Bound Space. Until now. Terra Corporation's discovery of Silvanus, a pristine forest world 27 light-years from Sol, should be cause for rejoicing. Instead, humanity is on the brink of a catastrophic war over its possession, and Aiden Macallan, the company's taciturn planetologist aboard the Argo, finds himself in the middle of it. After a skirmish between military forces of Earth and Mars, Aiden is stranded alone on Silvanus. Drawn into its mysterious beauty, he soon discovers the entire planet is alive-living proof of the Gaia Hypothesis. Its vast global network of symbiotic fungus has evolved a neural net from which a consciousness of profound depth has emerged. It also happens to hold the key to restoring Earth's dying biosphere and the rapid terraforming of Mars-but only if Aiden can solve the deeper puzzle of why Silvanus is killing itself. His quest is guided by an eccentric AI whose fondness for jazz enables it to communicate with the planet's neural net, and by his love for Skye Landen, a gifted geophysiologist from the Lovelock Institute. But time is running out. Cole Brahmin, Terra Corp's malevolent jackal, has gone rogue. He's racing toward Silvanus aboard the Domain's most powerful battle cruiser, bringing war in his wake and pursuing foul designs of his own in which the ruination of Silvanus is only a prelude. Determined to stop him, Skye Landen enlists the aid of the renowned quantum physicist Elgin Woo, and together they set out for Silvanus aboard Woo's Starhawk, an experimental spacecraft with mind-boggling capabilities. Meanwhile, Aiden must trek across a living landscape of exquisite diversity, driven by a recurring dream in which dark pagan archetypes grow frighteningly real-and more personal-with each step of his harrowing pursuit to save Silvanus and reclaim humanity's future. They're all on a collision course that can end only in the destruction of civilization or its ultimate salvation.

Through a Forest of Stars

In this volume ethical analysis is linked with practical advice on how to broach difficult decisions, handling uncertainty and facilitating patient choice. It links the ethical debate to the clinical problems of communication.

David Jeffrey

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