Database of "Rural Miscellany" by John Wynn-Jones

Dr John Wynn-Jones, Immediate Past Chair WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice has been writing a regular “rural miscellany” email since March. This has been to provide resources on COVID-19 but also to give us a touch of poetry as a diversion in these difficult times. His body of work is now available on one website for your enjoyment. Read more below:

Dear All

I have been collecting information that I believe is valuable to rural doctors around the world since March. The accumulated database is now very large and it has not only become of treasure chest of news, resources, scientific papers and comment but it gives a very useful overview of the tragic roller-coaster that we have all been part of for the last five months.

This has been a remarkable and sometime exhausting journey for me as I have tracked this horrific event.

I became aware early on that other resources provide factual information but this is also a very human crisis, where compassion, kindness and community must play an equally important place in our thoughts and actions. This is why I added the poetry. Many colleagues tell me that they take some time out during the day to take their minds off Covid-19 by reading the poems.

I have been working as part of a team with the University of Queensland to establish a searchable database from what we have already collected and what we aim to continue to gather in the weeks and months ahead. I am so grateful to Bruce, Belinda, Amie and Tiana for the support their support and hard work. We are all part of the same team!

Please take a look at the website. It will have some flaws and we need you to tell us about them on ruralwonca@uq.edu.au or fill in the form on the website. We need your help to make this work.

visit website here
Please put it in your favourites, tell other databases to add it, tell your colleagues about it and get it out there!

Thank you everyone for your help and support and from the team, "Take care and stay safe"

Dr John Wynn-Jones

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.
John Clare 1793-1864