John Launer is a doctor, educator, organisational consultant and award-winning writer. He is currently lead for educational innovation in primary care for Health Education England in London and the South East. His other posts include honorary senior lecturer in primary care at University College London, honorary lifetime consultant at the Tavistock Clinic, faculty member at ISTUD business school in Milan and honorary president of the Association of Narrative Practice in Healthcare.
With a dual professional background in general practice and family therapy as well a degree in English literature, John's interests range across the borders of health care, systems thinking, and the humanities. They include clinical supervision for the health professions, team development in the health service, and narrative medicine. He was the originator, with Caroline Lindsey, of "Conversations Inviting Change" (CIC). This is a narrative-based model for interactional skills, used in encounters with patients, clients and families, as well as for individual and group supervision, mentoring, coaching, team facilitation and conflict resolution. John has given presentations and workshops on "CIC" in every region of the UK and in Europe, Israel, Japan, the United States, Canada and Australia. During 2016, John ran workshops in in Denmark, Germany. Italy and Canada, giving the address at the "white coat ceremony" at McGill Medical School in Montreal. Visits in 2017 include Palestine and Italy.
For a short podcast where John describes and demonstrates "CIC", click here.
For further details of consultancy and training, click on the menu at the top left of the page.
Books and writing
John has published a full length biography of the psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein: "Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein" You can purchase it in the UK and Europe edition or the US one. Its launch was marked at the Freud Museum in London, and at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. For more details, click on "Spielrein biography" at the top of this page. The biography will be issued as a softback in June 2017.
John's award-winning book "How Not to Be a Doctor: and other essays" is due for reissue later this year by Duckworth Publishers (UK) and Overlook Press (US) It was originally published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press in 2008 and was named as a Book of the Year by the British Medical Association.
John is an associate editor of the Postgraduate Medical Journal and writes a monthly column there on reflective practice and medical humanities. He was a columnist for Doctor and Hospital Doctor for over twenty years, and contributed the Coda column to the international medical journal QJM for seven years. Articles by him have appeared in the BMJ, British Journal of General Practice, Journal of Family Therapy and other major journals.
