Southampton-authored medical book that 'retains its humanity' wins Royal Society of Medicine book award

The Oxford Handbook of General Practice, written by Dr Chantal Simon, Dr Hazel Everitt and Jon Birtwistle from the University of Southampton's School of Medicine, and co-written by Dr Brian Stevenson, a Hampshire GP, has won this year's Royal Society of Medicine and Society of Authors book prize for the best new authored medical book in 2002/2003.

At an awards ceremony at the Royal Society of Medicine, Colin Johnson, Chairman of the Society of Authors Medical Writers Group said that the book succeeded in being the most comprehensive current text about general practice while managing to retain its humanity. Professor Robert Winston, who presented the awards, said that it was good to see that a book that he could read had won.

The Oxford Handbook of General Practice was published by Oxford University Press in July 2002, has been on the BMJ's bestseller's list and highly-rated on Amazon since, and has had positive reviews in the major UK journals which are distributed to GPs.

"We felt we were going a bit against the grain while writing this book," comments Dr Simon, co-author and editor. "GP's textbooks are usually very wordy, so we decided to move away from this tradition and produce a succinct but comprehensive guide which could serve as a quick reference book for GPs."

Market research has revealed that their efforts have been successful and the authors are now working on the second edition, which will be available in early 2005.