Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcription has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors and ommissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes To Life show on UK Health Radio. I’m Robin Daly, regular host for the weekly show and founder of the charity of the same name, Yes To Life, that advocates for the widespread availability of integrative medicine for those with cancer. Treatment that seeks to address people, not illnesses, by responding as fully as possible to their needs in body, mind and spirit. The subject of today’s show is a testament to the fact that some very helpful support can come from what you might describe as left field, from really quite unexpected places. Hypnotherapy is one such approach, and I was delighted to come across Dr. Sarah Partridge speaking about it at the recent amazing integrative and personalized medicine congress in London. Dr. Partridge is a clinical oncologist specialising in head and neck cancers. Sarah, welcome to the Yes To Life show.

Dr Sarah Partridge
Thank you very much, Robin. It’s lovely to be here.

Robin Daly
Great to have you as my guest. Now, you’re going to think this is very remiss, but in almost 10 years of weekly shows, we’ve certainly touched on hypnotherapy, but never focused on it, in excuse me, already.

Dr Sarah Partridge
Well no, never too late and I’m just delighted that you turned to me to try and hopefully bring a little bit of a spotlight into it because I think it has been left in the shadows for far too long.

Robin Daly
I know you think that.

Dr Sarah Partridge
mission I’m on. Yeah, great.

Robin Daly
Well, we’ll do our best to set things right. And I’ve already heard you speak about it, so I know what a passionate advocate you are. Yes. So, the first thing I want to point out to everybody is how unusual it is to find a consultant clinical oncologist who is such an ardent fan of something that you might find in the complementary therapist unit around the side of the hospital. So how did that all come about?

Dr Sarah Partridge
Well it goes back quite a long long time. I mean I think when I went into oncology I’d already developed quite a fascination for psychology and holistic care and was very much aware that what you say really mattered to people. I’d always been really intrigued about some of the, as we would describe them, alternative religions, philosophies, shamanistic healing, healing in general and the balance between the mind and consciousness and that’s a whole other big area. It is. But very much aware that that therapeutic relationship was really important. I even went back as far as my childhood because my mum had depression and I used to find that actually she got a little bit better when I sat on the bed and chatted to her and really tried to air things and of course that is talking therapy and you don’t need a professional degree to do that.

Dr Sarah Partridge
It’s all about companionship and care with the capital C and probably love with the capital L and so I think that bringing that through into the framework where oncology and I sort of seem to fit because it blended all of those psychological insights with holistic care package which I think most oncologists very much acknowledge. I really did find that life’s taken me on some interesting routes but I discovered hypnosis through an inquiry into neuro -linguistic programming when I was doing my fellowship in Canada and that was just one of my companion fellows in Vancouver mentioning this that something a GP friend of hers had explored and found interesting and indeed Vancouver had an NLP let’s call it an NLP Institute I think yes and they had open evenings.

Dr Sarah Partridge
We went along one evening and I was blown away because there was a chap who had a morbid fear of heights. Vancouver is quite a hilly place and there are lots of heights to negotiate because lots of bridges span big waterways through the city and he was having to spend a fortune on ferries because he couldn’t go across bridges and he had had to negotiate his way to visit the actual room to ensure that it wasn’t you know too high and his life was pretty much a misery you know planning the intricate route that wasn’t going to put him in the way of anything tall,

Dr Sarah Partridge
high or you know anywhere near an edge and within 20 minutes he was out on a balcony in a high -state relation having had a rapid phobia cure demonstrated for this particular problem and I thought I’d never seen anything quite that quick and pivotal for somebody born out as a demo really and he was absolutely blown away by this himself and so when I came back from my fellowship I looked into NLP a little more and indeed it is a blend of hypnosis and accepts that people have different frameworks of understanding communications whether that’s processed more by their visual cortex versus their auditory framework or indeed if they’re very much more a sort of learning by doing type of kinesthetic person but that aside the hypnosis really did seem to have quite a powerful influence and that’s what led me into training in it and then once I had completed my training in 2005 we were all encouraged to bring that into our clinical practice and again within the examples that I chose to offer it to patients most of those patients had a real sea change in their experience of whatever problem they were trying to address so it’s been a fascinating journey and hence each patient who’s had such a dramatic change often in such situations where you know we don’t have a medical solution we’ve tried you know increasing doses of sedation of allium or you know diazepam and that hasn’t worked but hypnosis has and so it definitely answers an area where we we need its help in medicine and yet it’s not taught not taught in medical school and in many psychology courses as well so it’s okay

Robin Daly
but you’re out there to say that right. I am. So just out of interest, what do your colleagues make of you in hypnotherapy?

Dr Sarah Partridge
Well, I think actually they have been supportive and often I try and help them out with challenging patients who have challenging problems because actually, you know, although some might think it’s a bit fringy, if it helps people, I don’t think my colleagues have any objection to that. And there are some, you know, folk out there who have serious phobias, anxiety issues, and time is one of the things that we lack massively in medicine at the moment. And I think that’s the detriment of the patient, but also the condition, because I think we all want to help our patients. And having a quicker solution can’t be that. You know, you can’t feel that. And a lot of psychologists are hugely helpful, but they too have long waiting lists and a program that often doesn’t tie into being able to turn somebody around in as quick a time as it’s really important for them to get on their cancer treatment, for example.

Robin Daly
Yeah, that’s pretty right. And out of interest, how did you come to be an oncologist? Was there some particular thing that led you in there?

Dr Sarah Partridge
I think well surgery was always interesting to me but I had quite severe postural hypotension so it was a bit of a laugh for many of my firm colleagues because they used to lay bets on how quickly it would take me to faint watching an operation.

Robin Daly
That’s not a good quality.

Dr Sarah Partridge
given something to do, it was a bit better, but it didn’t really seem like her career that I was cut out for. And medicine was therefore much more fascinating. And I think the oncology side was really inspired by a fantastic oncologist. We meet people on our journey through life who inspire us. And it was Bob Phillips, Dr. Bob Phillips, who for anyone who knew him, was moved by admiration for his total dedication to his patients, his friendliness to every level of the organization, every person he ever met. He was warm and effusive. And it was a very sort of specialty, which seemed to have real humanity embedded within it. So I think that’s who, I think, converted me during a six month period working for him. But I think clearly I am a relatively empathic doctor and find that actually oncology does fulfill me in the job I’ve chosen because I think I admit freely a sort of conveyor belt clinician. There are some areas of medicine where it’s fast and furious.

Dr Sarah Partridge
And I think ever more so these days, sadly. And I don’t think any of us are the better off on either side of the equation when you’re just feeling like you’re processing a diagnosis.

Robin Daly
Right. It’s really good to hear that. I mean, you know, we often hear the shortcomings from a patient perspective of being on a conveyor belt But actually it’s to everyone’s detriment as you say it makes for a very poor job So, yeah, you get real satisfaction from giving genuine help and and really being able to take the care that you’d like to with patients, I’m sure

Dr Sarah Partridge
I mean, I think the hypnosis is just another rather wonderful string to the bow of being able to try and solve a problem as quickly as you can. It does take a little bit of time to do. I’m not saying it’s certainly not like the stage. It’s not a click of the fingers and look into my eyes and all of those terrible sort of metaphors that people exactly come up with on the spoofs that you see about hypnosis. But I think it can be so much more effective and efficacious within the framework of 20 minutes, half an hour. And for people who are willing to engage with it, the wonderful thing that you can do for them is to empower them to learn how to do it. So I really very much want my patients to get back as much control out of their futures their destiny, their symptomatology, which will serve them outside the clinic.

Dr Sarah Partridge
And that’s a win -win as well, because if they’re feeling more comfortable getting better quicker, I’m happier and everybody’s needing less, less support, which is going to leave us unable to support somebody else who does need it. Absolutely right.

Robin Daly
It’s a win -win, all right. Yeah, fantastic. Okay, well you’re a mentor though, sounds like my kind of clinician. I could like a chat like that. Okay, so now to the meat of the matter, talking specifically about people with cancer and those getting through conventional treatments for cancer, what are the big wins using hypnotherapy in your experience? The main things that you feel are a large help to people.

Dr Sarah Partridge
Well, I think it is actually one of those incredibly safe interventions that people can do for themselves. It is also incredibly diverse in its benefits. So I’ve mentioned anxiety and phobias, you know, to be able to allow somebody to undergo for head and neck cancer therapy the manufacture of a mask that has to pin them down or hold them gently down to the couch that allows the beams to go exactly where they need to be repeatedly. If you have a phobia, that’s a no -go situation often if you’ve got claustrophobia. So being able to allow somebody to manage that emotional overwhelm so it’s no longer, you know, taking control of their physiology and enabling them to, within that lovely relaxing trance state where that mask is no longer something that’s imprisoning them but something that’s supporting them allowing them to relax,

Dr Sarah Partridge
allowing the treatment to be done far more pleasantly and actually time flies when you’re in a light trance state. So you don’t even notice that, you know, half an hour wearing that mask has gone because you’re actually often a lovely little dream world, your safe place or wherever you want to go. So I think from that point of view, time distortion, you can use metaphors to allow you to enhance your immune system, heal more quickly, use your imagination in a fun way if you like but actually it has downstream knock -on benefits because most people who are using it regularly generally feel better in themselves. They’re not as bothered by the side effects, the side effects seem to require less medication, they have less pain and they recover more quickly. So from the point of view of the radiotherapy and oncology setting, in my domain which is head and neck cancers and their treatment with radiotherapy and chemotherapy, those people who use it definitely sail through their treatment.

Dr Sarah Partridge
That’s not to say they don’t have any side effects, they do but we generally have to prescribe them less medication and they bounce back quicker, they get back to eating and drinking more normally rather more quickly in the normal way. If they have got other legacies of treatment or their cancer then hypnosis can be a really useful way to reframe what’s important in life and maybe make them have a new perspective which is always a difficult process particularly if you’ve had a disfiguring or functionally altering intervention and really trying to take a different view of what is really meaningful in their lives and that sort of brings you around to a sort of existential remolding I suppose,

Dr Sarah Partridge
understanding the value of life, how transitory it can be but how by choosing to suck the joy out of moments you can appreciate it so much more even and perhaps because of having a cancer diagnosis and it is one of those paradoxes I think not just because of hypnosis but just because of the journeys people go on through having cancer that they really do start to value life in a different way and it really cuts to the core of what’s important amidst their relationships,

Dr Sarah Partridge
their work -life balance and looking after themselves so I have had patients turn around and say actually I never thought I’d say this but cancer has been the best thing that ever happened to me because it’s really put things in perspective and I’ve now changed what I want to do the rest of my life so hypnosis can do that as well in a different way if that’s what people feel that they need but the most important thing to say about it hypnosis will never make anybody do what they don’t want to do it is a very non -hierarchical therapeutic process and some would say all hypnosis is self -hypnosis actually

Robin Daly
I was going to ask you about that. All right, well look, really interesting, I mean that subject of what’s to be gained from having cancer is something we talk about a lot on this show. Of course I have experience of lots of people telling me the same thing, that it was the best thing that ever happened to them, saved their lives. And it’s something that is clearly we need to understand, we need to capitalise on as much as possible with so many people facing what is after all. Without that it’s just, well who wants it, it’s terrible, absolutely dreadful. So the silver lining is absolutely the saving of the whole situation and we’ve had a whole conference focusing on that in fact a couple of years ago and say it’s often something we talk about. So very interesting to hear that you feel that hypnosis is a way to access that kind of perspective.

Robin Daly
I was trying to put together, you gave me all these wildly different problems that people have and it’s sort of like hypnosis is the answer. So I was trying to say, well what is it about hypnosis which is affecting all those different things, from recovering quickly to depression, to phobias, to all these very different things and what could affect those and I think it’s, you put your finger on it and it’s in this territory of your fundamental relationship to life. So if you’re basically wound up and you’re in a corner with the worst disease, no demand, having some of the most difficult treatments ever given to people, life doesn’t look very good and it might have been difficult before you even got cancer in fact.

Robin Daly
So your relationship to life may well not be that great and I think many people realise that you take a simple pain that you have, well if you basically are tense around a pain, well it’s worse actually, you can make it worse and if you can actually sort of make room for it and all the rest of it, chances are it will reduce, maybe even disappear. So that kind of movement of bringing people to themselves, making them feel relaxed at home, that things are fundamentally okay, even though they may be some difficulty at the moment, fundamentally they’re alright, they’re not fundamentally wrong, that’s a massive thing to bring to people and I’m very excited to hear you can deal with hypnosis.

Dr Sarah Partridge
I mean, I think I wouldn’t want anybody to think that I would be advocating this as a one size fits all, because it most certainly is not. And I think that hypnosis is an extremely normal state for many of us, the majority of us, I would say, but we just don’t recognize it. In fact, some people get quite scared about the very term hypnosis, but it really is just a focused state of attention where parts of our brains switch off to other perceptions. And our brains can multitask to a certain degree, but they can’t feel two separate emotions at once. You can’t feel happy and scared. Okay. Yeah. And you can’t feel anxious and relaxed. I hadn’t thought of that. So it’s actually being able to control where your attention sits. And often people ask me, how similar is it to mindfulness meditation?

Dr Sarah Partridge
And I think if you looked at a brain trace or an EEG then there would be similarities and you’d see what we call alpha and theta waves in a meditative and hypnotic state. But the process that you do within a meditation is possibly more a dissociation, a disengagement of worries and anxieties and a separation of you watching your thoughts just pass you by I think. And that’s sort of very similar to mindfulness in some ways. In terms of hypnosis, I sort of try to describe it as a bit more of a toolbox because you’re using your imagination metaphor, you’re very much engaging with how you can alter something with an end point very much in mind. So it’s much more engaging and therefore far more satisfying for a fixer like me. And I think, well, I probably speak for many of us that most people feel better when they’re in control of their circumstances and can do something.

Dr Sarah Partridge
And some people are very hypnotizable, about 10% of the population are highly hypnotizable, but about 80% of us probably fall into a middle ground and there will be 10% for whom hypnosis just doesn’t work. The middle ground, which includes me, would need to work a little bit on nurturing that. And it’s a very complex induction of a trance by a graded relaxation process, a countdown, going down some steps or floating up into a different place. It doesn’t need to be going down, it could be going up, it could be doing many different things. And there are different ways to induce it if you’re trained in therapy. But for self -hypnosis, there are lots of ways to learn self -hypnosis, which you can find online. We’ve set up a website to try and help people with that. But I think the process is something that you can make your own and can give yourself… therapeutic suggestions whilst in trance to make it easier and easier to get into that state so that actually it becomes a bit more second nature.

Dr Sarah Partridge
In fact, if you look at a sports person or an elite sports person, they often have, you can see them do a little ritual. You can see them going somewhere in their head. You know that they’re not focused on the crowds. They’re going inside and they’re working up to their performance. They are actually doing some hypnotic sort of rehearsal for everything going well. They’ve rehearsed it and rehearsed it. An Olympic athlete has run that race in their head far more often than they have done it in practice. It’s that process that actually then allows them to get into that flow state, which is a sort of effortless hyperperformance, which physiologically takes them to the next level. So what we want to do in healthcare is really sort of take that little bit of optimal physiological working that comes with hypnosis as well.

Dr Sarah Partridge
That relaxation response is something magical because it works something differently in our brains and our bodies so that actually we see in trials and studies of which there are many out there using hypnosis that people who regularly use it have stronger immune systems. They have better T cell counts and anti -cancer immunology parameters when you measure them. They actually don’t get as many viral infections. In fact, even interestingly in the 80s when HIV didn’t have all the panoply of drugs we now control it with, they tried teaching HIV sufferers and AIDS sufferers self -hypnosis. Regularly using self -hypnosis cut down the number of intercurrent viral infections and infections that they got just from a mind intervention. It is an extraordinary thing. I say to my patients that we spend a fortune on really clever drugs which are immunotherapies but we sort of forget that we have our own immunotherapy inside us.

Dr Sarah Partridge
We can harness it and that actually there are ways that we can use visual imagery in trance to get it ramped up. I’m sure we all know patients who have completely outstripped their prognostications and it’s usually something to do with their mindset.

Robin Daly
That’s a big, big part of that, for sure. Yeah, of course, there’s a science for psychoneuroimmunology, which, yeah, it’s amazing stuff. And you’re right, I mean, this survey of patients who had outstripped their prognosis came up with these nine things, which they’d all done. And seven out of nine of them are not practical things. They’re all to do with their attitude, with their relationship to themselves, all that kind of stuff, they’re much more to do with the mind and the spirit than they are to do with taking some supplements, which is one of them. But, you know, so yeah, very interesting indeed. Yeah, I love it. So yeah, I see how, you know, the difference with mindfulness, meditation is that it’s obviously a lot more proactive, you’ve got to kind of plan for it. Whereas, yeah, meditation is a kind of letting things be as they are. And yeah, it’s different, but it has got some similar qualities, I can see.

Dr Sarah Partridge
it definitely has. And there are some people who really do find the mindfulness meditation may be more their thing, and that’s funny. But the hypnosis is probably worth a go. And I think there’s a bit of a mixed review of people who find that because they’re good meditators, they can be very good at self -hypnosis versus some people who’ve really good at meditation. So they find it actually quite difficult to do self -hypnosis. I’m sure, again, one size never fits all.

Robin Daly
So can we revisit this thing where you said that some people say that all hypnosis is self -hypnosis? Just expand on that please.

Dr Sarah Partridge
So I think when people come to see somebody for clinical hypnosis, and I would like to just sort of pause there and say when they come to see somebody therapeutically, because if you go to see a stage show, that’s completely different. We’re not talking about stage shows here at all, because that is a whole other use of hypnotism, which unfortunately tends to scare people off what can be achieved with clinical hypnosis. But when you come to a therapeutic setting to use hypnosis, most clinical hypnotherapists will want to know a bit more about you, what the problems are that you’re dealing with, and how you process the good times,

Dr Sarah Partridge
what are the best times, the worst times. And so really trying to get to understand how they can embed some of the things that you can utilise in a hypnotherapeutic setting. But there are generally sort of, if you’re listening to audio files, which have also been shown to be very useful tools as well, which don’t involve going to see somebody, but just listening to a therapeutic suggestion set just through headphones on a recording. Most of us have certain things that we enjoy, you know, beaches, floating in the sea, lovely weather, beautiful countryside, those sorts of things. When you go and see a personal hypnotherapist, they’ll very much be sort of coring down to as many of the features that really make it much more personal for you, so that they can design their therapeutic session to really tap into all of those and make that experience something that you can take away,

Dr Sarah Partridge
which will be much more deeply embedded. But the process of hypnosis usually starts with the induction, as I’ve described, gently getting you into the state where you’re listening to some suggestions. And, you know, you’re at liberty not to take the suggestions as to taking the suggestions, but most of them are really just noticing your breathing, noticing, you know, where you’re comfortable and adjusting your position. And you’re being given permission to ignore, you know, distractions perhaps, and allowing you to relax progressively. Then when you are deemed to be in trance, which most people, you know, as a therapist, you can see are much more relaxed, you can see, you know, they’re swallowing less frequently, their breathing is slower. Then the process of therapeutic suggestions can be given, and those are obviously targeted at the various challenges that person is having to deal with. Often metaphors can be conjured with pre -existing agreement or generic ones, depending on the problem.

Dr Sarah Partridge
Often irritable bowel, for example, can use metaphors of a river going from a really agitated rapids, lots of rocks and boulders in a river going into a nice wide, huge, slow -moving river that is calmed right down so that actually you’re embedding that suggestion internally to have the bowel movement sensitivity much calmer with less obstacles, less turbulence. And those sorts of metaphors, particularly sort of irritable bowel, can be really markedly powerful. And whether that also allows various sort of neurochemical signaling to alter in the brain as well, switching off those stress -cortisol -driven impacts, which the bowel may be very sensitive to, may also play a part. But the post -hypnotic suggestions are then sort of brought in hopefully to ease the future after the hypnotic trance period. And then once that’s completed, the therapist will usually give some instructions for the subject to come out of trance and return to the hearing now, bringing all comfortable sensations with them.

Dr Sarah Partridge
It’s very unusual for people to have what we call abreactions in hypnotic trance. Some people can get quite emotional if you’re dealing with past events and trying to reframe them. But actually the strange thing is that a lot of trance states, I’ve been in lots of trance states when I was training, you feel completely able to get up and do anything else you want to, but you just rather not. So, if you’re far along my job, you would be able to get up and remove yourself. You’re aware of things going on around, but they’re not sort of impacting on you in the same way as that would get a thought generated. You would be focused in the framework of the therapeutic session as part of that therapeutic alliance. So, it’s very rare, I think, for a dictatorial type of hypnotic process to be done, really, for most therapeutic settings, but that’s not to say you can’t induce trance in people who are far from relaxed.

Dr Sarah Partridge
In fact, you still can, because a lot of people who are in a fearful state are actually partly in trance. How interesting. And that’s when, you know, actually you concede, almost conversationally, when I see people who’ve just been given that cancer diagnosis, I accept that they’re probably partly in trance. And the way that manifests mostly is, I heard the diagnosis and nothing else.

Dr Sarah Partridge
You know, my mind was completely just in shock and all, but if in that state you can embed some really important understandings that you’re going to be okay, we’ve got a solution to this. You can relax. Then actually that that is a really important way that you can obviously go through some of the motions, sow the seeds and just reassure somebody that it doesn’t really matter if they don’t remember it all just now, there’ll be plenty of time to read about it and talk about it later. So, you know, that you’re taking the fear down and that’s the most important thing.

Robin Daly
Okay, I hope a lot of your colleagues are hearing you say this in this show because that sounds an amazing gift to people because I don’t think people are getting that kind of reassurance. They’re just going away like rabbits and headlights and in shock. So yeah, obviously I had never seen it as an opportunity in the way you described it to actually embed some helpful supportive messages and I could see what difference that might make.

Dr Sarah Partridge
I’m trying to talk to the wider medical fraternity really as part of my role as president of the section of hypnosis in psychosomatic medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine, which is one of the few organizations that does have a canopy that covers all medical and surgical specialties. We’re actually getting some really good events set up that actually bring the data from the hypnosis fraternity into the frame and actually have given talks to surgeons reminding them that even patients who are anesthetized hear things. So actually there have been some fascinating studies where they’ve actually given therapeutic suggestions to people on ITU on ventilators or under anesthesia during an operation and they have healed faster, they have got off ventilators as soon as they got out of ITU sooner. So you don’t even have to be conscious.

Robin Daly
Well, it makes complete sense. It’s not like your ears stop working because you’re unconscious, you know, and not like your brain stops working. So, it’s also happening somewhere. Yeah, very good. Okay. So, we’ve just got a few minutes left. Do you want to tell me a little bit about the transform medical that you set up? That’s transform, T -R -A -N -C -E, transform medical, all about self -hypnosis.

Dr Sarah Partridge
Delighted to, yes, delighted. I mean, I set this up with Akwali Rumi Panovska, who’s a doctor who’s now sort of doing full -time clinical hypnosis, but has come from a neuroscience background, has been a past editor of the European Journal of Hypnosis and a past president of the RSM. And so she and I very much have been allied to trying to bring hypnosis into the health service more widely, really as an adjuvant, not to have it seen so much as a complementary therapy. That’s not to demean complementary therapy, but really to have it taken as just one of the things that you can have alongside all of your other treatments. In terms of the ability to do that, we have to acknowledge there are not enough medics trained in clinical hypnosis. Is that something we’re also trying to address? They have to know about it first. They do.

Dr Sarah Partridge
And so you’ve got to start somewhere in the education is the first light touch to seed that message. And there are lots of allied healthcare professionals who are also interested in learning about it and who can also use it to help patients as well. But Transform Medical was set up as a web -based means of providing a whole array of audio files for both healthcare professionals who in their own right are very stressed people, dealing with a lot of burnout at the moment, but to allow patients to hopefully be signposted to use and learn self -hypnosis and pick and choose what other audio files they may find helpful. Because actually there have been studies done that show that the audio files, if introduced and obviously handheld by your clinician and your team, will work very well indeed. But it may well be that some people do need that little bit more personal touch to get going or to take it to another level.

Dr Sarah Partridge
But certainly if they can just lie back and listen to those once a day is all it would need to two or three times a week, you know, perhaps, or even as you get better just as and when you need it, it can be a really fantastic life tool. And on our website, we’ve got a number of sort of interviews with other clinicians who’ve done studies in it and the history of hypnosis. So it hopefully gives people a flavor of what it is from the medical end point. And hopefully with time, we will get more and more people interested and educated more fully about it. But you don’t have to do a full diploma in clinical hypnosis to be able to use it. You can use it very safely yourself. And that’s what we want.

Robin Daly
Well, you know, the simple thing you just talked about there about making positive, supportive suggestions to somebody just after they’ve been given a diagnosis. What could be simpler? You know, that’s kind of using the placebo effect to the max, getting the most out of it. Yeah, hugely valuable thing to do. But it also positions the practitioners very well in relation to the patient. It’s not just delivering information and diagnostics. And that’s the point that it is, they’re there to support them. And they know that and they know they are showing appreciation for the immense difficulty they’re going through.

Dr Sarah Partridge
I mean, I think that the sad thing is that, you know, with the best will in the world, there have been lots of little phrases that are embedded in medicine just to scratch a prick won’t hurt much. Yes, I know. You know, the little things that are done before the needle goes in, which draw attention. Yeah, they work the wrong way, don’t they? And what clinicians need to understand is actually the best way is to distract. The patient knows they’re going to have a blood test. They think maybe they’re stuck out with the door to carry on. Actually, if you say, can you tell me about your last holiday, you know, where did you go? Brilliant. Your mind is taken somewhere else and you don’t notice the injection, the cannula so much. And these are conversational techniques that actually help your patients and, you know, actually forge rapport and, you know, make it far, far easier to get through both from the clinical endpoint and the patient’s viewpoint as well. Fantastic. I love it.

Robin Daly
OK, it’s been a great conversation Sarah, thanks so much for coming on, I really enjoyed it. I hope we’ve done a service to hypnosis and hypnotherapy in this show and the world has got out a little bit further and more people will be interested to pursue it.

Dr Sarah Partridge
Well, if anybody is interested, you know, we’ve got various events from time to time on the Transform Medical website and you can always get in touch with us through that as well. Fantastic. Thank you so much for asking me, Robin. As you know, I’m always very happy to talk about chemical hypnosis. Yeah.

Robin Daly
Well, Dr. Partridge is my kind of oncologist, clearly deeply caring and empathic towards her patients. A kind of response everyone with cancer deserves. If this is something you feel strongly about, do take a look at Yes to Life’s charter for oncology which seeks to address the culture of oncology. You can read about it by going to the Yes to Life website, that’s yesterlife .org .uk, scroll down the homepage until you see the introduction to the charter and then follow the links. If you agree with what you read and you want to support our efforts to bring cultural change, then please sign our petition which is linked to the charter. Leave a comment to say why you support it and please, please spread the word to get more people on board. Thanks for listening today, I’ll be back again next week at the same time with another Yes to Life show here on UK Health Radio, so I hope you’ll make a point of joining me again, goodbye.