Contraceptive ‘mini pills’ to be offered over the counter in UK

Progesterone pills can be dispensed by pharmacists without prescription from late July, for a charge

Weeds, wellbeing and pizza ovens: Bridgewater, a new kind of RHS garden

By allowing designers to playfully rewrite the rules, the Royal Horticultural Society has created a radical, sustainable garden that is almost guaranteed success

Why am I so furious about teeth? They are deeply socially divisive

The gap between those who can or can’t afford a dentist is widening. There is a three-year wait for NHS appointments – while the market for whitening and tweakments booms, writes Guardian columnist Emma Beddington

Contraception blood-clot risk: ‘public need better access to advice’

Health experts in UK say risk remains low, as social media debates shift from AstraZeneca jab to hormonal contraceptives

Screen Covid patients and NHS staff for post-traumatic stress, expert urges

Head of Royal College of Psychiatrists warns that the emotional toll from the pandemic could last for years

Many Different Kinds of Love by Michael Rosen review – life after Covid

The much loved writer gives a memorable account of the disease from a patient’s point of view, in poems, notes and emails – and conveys how it feels to come back from the brink

‘The ketamine blew my mind’: can psychedelics cure addiction and depression?

This week sees the opening of the first UK high-street clinic offering psychedelic-assisted therapy. Could popping psilocybin be the future of mental healthcare?

‘I’ve been called Satan’: Dr Rachel Clarke on facing abuse in the Covid crisis

As well as fighting to keep Covid patients alive, NHS staff are now battling a surge in abuse and denial in the second wave. Dr Rachel Clarke on how she is coping – and what gives her hope

Rachel Clarke: ‘NHS staff are burning with frustration and grief at this second wave’

The palliative care doctor and author on a year of Covid in UK hospitals and her hopes for the vaccine

Tom Templeton: ‘I suspect doctors have realised how therapeutic it can be to write books’

The former Observer writer and now GP talks about his new book, 34 Patients, and the challenges he has faced during the pandemic

UK tourists who need routine treatment to be covered in EU for 12 months

British government says people entitled to NHS care who need treatment such as dialysis can apply

Covid: NHS hospital trusts told to rethink pregnant women partner ban

Fresh guidance issued after growing outrage about women being forced to go through labour alone

The natural birth cultists care little about leaving women in agony

The horrors found by the Ockenden report are not alas confined to one maternity unit

Distressed mother separated from breastfed baby for days during hospital stay

Hospital admits breaking own Covid policy as mothers like Charlotte Jones are being needlessly kept apart from their babies

Lives of mothers and babies left in danger at Nottingham University hospitals trust – report

Care Quality Commission downgrades trust’s maternity services to inadequate