When Doctors Get Sick

When Doctors Get Sick PDF Author: H.N. Mandell
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489920013
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
When a doctor gets sick, his status changes. No longer is his role de fined as deriving from doctus, i. e. , learned, but as from patiens, the present participle of the deponent verb, patior, i. e. , to suffer, with all the passive acceptance of pain the verb implies. From pass us, the past participle, we get the word passion, with its wide gamut of emotional allusions, ranging from animal lust to the sufferings of martyrs. It is the connotation, not the denotation, of the word that defines the change of status. When a doctor is sick enough to be admitted to a hospital, he can no longer write orders; orders are written about him, removing him from control of his own situation. One recalls a sonnet from W. H. Auden's sequence, The Quest, which closes with the lines: Unluckily they were their situation: One should not give a poisoner medicine, A conjuror fine apparatus, Nor a rifle to a melancholic bore. That is a reasonable expression of twentieth-century skepticism and ra tionalism. Almost all medical literature is written from the doctor's point of view. Only a few medically trained writers-one thinks of Chekhov's Ward Six-manage to incorporate the patient's response to his situa tion. Patients' voices were not much in evidence until well into the twentieth century, but an early example is John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624).

When Doctors Get Sick

When Doctors Get Sick PDF Author: H.N. Mandell
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489920013
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
When a doctor gets sick, his status changes. No longer is his role de fined as deriving from doctus, i. e. , learned, but as from patiens, the present participle of the deponent verb, patior, i. e. , to suffer, with all the passive acceptance of pain the verb implies. From pass us, the past participle, we get the word passion, with its wide gamut of emotional allusions, ranging from animal lust to the sufferings of martyrs. It is the connotation, not the denotation, of the word that defines the change of status. When a doctor is sick enough to be admitted to a hospital, he can no longer write orders; orders are written about him, removing him from control of his own situation. One recalls a sonnet from W. H. Auden's sequence, The Quest, which closes with the lines: Unluckily they were their situation: One should not give a poisoner medicine, A conjuror fine apparatus, Nor a rifle to a melancholic bore. That is a reasonable expression of twentieth-century skepticism and ra tionalism. Almost all medical literature is written from the doctor's point of view. Only a few medically trained writers-one thinks of Chekhov's Ward Six-manage to incorporate the patient's response to his situa tion. Patients' voices were not much in evidence until well into the twentieth century, but an early example is John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624).

When Doctors Get Sick

When Doctors Get Sick PDF Author: H. N. Mandell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781489920027
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description


When Doctors Become Patients

When Doctors Become Patients PDF Author: Robert Klitzman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195327675
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
For many doctors, their role as powerful healer precludes thoughts of ever getting sick themselves. When they do, it initiates a profound shift of awareness-- not only in their sense of their selves, which is invariably bound up with the "invincible doctor" role, but in the way that they view their patients and the doctor-patient relationship. While some books have been written from first-person perspectives on doctors who get sick-- by Oliver Sacks among them-- and TV shows like "House" touch on the topic, never has there been a "systematic, integrated look" at what the experience is like for doctors who get sick, and what it can teach us about our current health care system and more broadly, the experience of becoming ill.The psychiatrist Robert Klitzman here weaves together gripping first-person accounts of the experience of doctors who fall ill and see the other side of the coin, as a patient. The accounts reveal how dramatic this transformation can be-- a spiritual journey for some, a radical change of identity for others, and for some a new way of looking at the risks and benefits of treatment options. For most however it forever changes the way they treat their own patients. These questions are important not just on a human interest level, but for what they teach us about medicine in America today. While medical technology advances, the health care system itself has become more complex and frustrating, and physician-patient trust is at an all-time low. The experiences offered here are unique resource that point the way to a more humane future.

An American Sickness

An American Sickness PDF Author: Elisabeth Rosenthal
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698407180
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

How We Do Harm

How We Do Harm PDF Author: Otis Webb Brawley, MD
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429941502
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
How We Do Harm exposes the underbelly of healthcare today—the overtreatment of the rich, the under treatment of the poor, the financial conflicts of interest that determine the care that physicians' provide, insurance companies that don't demand the best (or even the least expensive) care, and pharmaceutical companies concerned with selling drugs, regardless of whether they improve health or do harm. Dr. Otis Brawley is the chief medical and scientific officer of The American Cancer Society, an oncologist with a dazzling clinical, research, and policy career. How We Do Harm pulls back the curtain on how medicine is really practiced in America. Brawley tells of doctors who select treatment based on payment they will receive, rather than on demonstrated scientific results; hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that seek out patients to treat even if they are not actually ill (but as long as their insurance will pay); a public primed to swallow the latest pill, no matter the cost; and rising healthcare costs for unnecessary—and often unproven—treatments that we all pay for. Brawley calls for rational healthcare, healthcare drawn from results-based, scientifically justifiable treatments, and not just the peddling of hot new drugs. Brawley's personal history – from a childhood in the gang-ridden streets of black Detroit, to the green hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, the largest public hospital in the U.S., to the boardrooms of The American Cancer Society—results in a passionate view of medicine and the politics of illness in America - and a deep understanding of healthcare today. How We Do Harm is his well-reasoned manifesto for change.

What Doctors Feel

What Doctors Feel PDF Author: Danielle Ofri
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807073334
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
A look at the emotional side of medicine—the shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love that affect patient care Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice have a profound impact on medical care. And while much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients. How do the stresses of medical life—from paperwork to grueling hours to lawsuits to facing death—affect the medical care that doctors can offer their patients? Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Danielle Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. With her renowned eye for dramatic detail, Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients and her forever fear of making another. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. But doctors don’t only feel fear, grief, and frustration. Ofri also reveals that doctors tell bad jokes about “toxic sock syndrome,” cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness. The stories here reveal the undeniable truth that emotions have a distinct effect on how doctors care for their patients. For both clinicians and patients, understanding what doctors feel can make all the difference in giving and getting the best medical care.

Fallible

Fallible PDF Author: Kyle Bradford Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781684334551
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
"Many physicians think they need to be infallible to be successful, but no one is immune from mental illness."

The Doctor Is Sick

The Doctor Is Sick PDF Author: Idayu Maarof
Publisher: MPH Group Publishing Sdn Bhd
ISBN: 9674154574
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
General practitioner Dr Idayu Maarof thought she was just suffering a run-of-the-mill fever. So she never expected to be diagnosed with a stroke-causing heart tumour. Thus, began a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows through what seemed like a never-ending battery of tests and, finally, major surgery. Yes, doctors get sick, too. Upon reflection, her ordeal provided an opportunity for post- traumatic growth. The illness opened her eyes, mind and heart to the real priorities in life. She also provides a medical practitioner's insights and points of view of what it is like to be on the hospital bed and not beside it, taking notes and asking questions. This book chronicles the traumatic journey that began with her diagnosis, followed by treatment and the path towards recovery, accompanied by a loyal husband, her loving children, and her supportive family and friends.

Why We Get Sick

Why We Get Sick PDF Author: Benjamin Bikman
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1950665178
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
A scientist reveals the groundbreaking evidence linking many major diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease, to a common root cause—insulin resistance—and shares an easy, effective plan to reverse and prevent it. We are sick. Around the world, we struggle with diseases that were once considered rare. Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and diabetes affect millions each year; many people are also struggling with hypertension, weight gain, fatty liver, dementia, low testosterone, menstrual irregularities and infertility, and more. We treat the symptoms, not realizing that all of these diseases and disorders have something in common. Each of them is caused or made worse by a condition known as insulin resistance. And you might have it. Odds are you do—over half of all adults in the United States are insulin resistant, with most other countries either worse or not far behind. In Why We Get Sick, internationally renowned scientist and pathophysiology professor Benjamin Bikman explores why insulin resistance has become so prevalent and why it matters. Unless we recognize it and take steps to reverse the trend, major chronic diseases will be even more widespread. But reversing insulin resistance is possible, and Bikman offers an evidence-based plan to stop and prevent it, with helpful food lists, meal suggestions, easy exercise principles, and more. Full of surprising research and practical advice, Why We Get Sick will help you to take control of your health.

Never Be Sick Again

Never Be Sick Again PDF Author: Raymond Francis
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
ISBN: 1558749543
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Presents a practical theory of health and disease that aims to revolutionize the way we look at illness. This book provides readers a holistic approach to living that will empower them to get well - and stay well.