Mark is an NHS palliative care consultant and honorary professor at Cardiff University School of Medicine. He founded TalkCPR.wales and has a national lead role to improve public understanding on topics relevant to care in the last years of life and at the extreme ends of medicine. He has given a Ted Talk on why subtleties in language are critical in modern healthcare and writes for international newspapers like the Washington Post. Mark has also done extensive television, theatre and radio media work and even talked about medical topics at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Hay Literary Festival.

We chat to Mark about conversations about end-of-life care, do-not-resuscitate decisions and Benedict Cumberbatch. This week's discussion is themed around the use of patients’ medicines at home (https://dtb.bmj.com/content/59/1/3).

Marks ‘Thanks You Letter to David Bowie’ can be found at https://blogs.bmj.com/spcare/2016/01/15/a-thank-you-letter-to-david-bowie-from-a-palliative-care-doctor/. His book choices are The Plague by Albert Camus and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. His music choice is, of course, Changes by David Bowie.

You can view the Aural Apothecary Library here; https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31270100-paul-gimson?ref=nav_mybooks&shelf=the-aural-apothecary

You can listen to the aural apothecary playlist here; https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3OsWj4w8sxsvuwR9zMXgn5?si=tiHXrQI7QsGtSQwPyz1KBg

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