An invaluable guide for doctors and patients on how to “recognize and navigate the emotional subtexts” of the doctor-patient...
Ofri (School of Medicine/New York Univ.; Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients, 2011, etc.) uses her experiences as a medical student and practicing physician at Bellevue Hospital to illuminate a side of medicine infrequently addressed: the psychological toll on dedicated doctors.
The author begins with the experiences of third-year medical students, as they leave the classroom for the “the ongoing bedlam” of a hospital ward. In addition to the difficult task of learning all the medical jargon, they absorb the gallows humor that helps medical professionals deal with the constant stress that goes with the territory. They must also learn how to deal with the stench of disease—which is worse in the case of the homeless—without losing sight of a patient's humanity. Ofri ably describes the sheer terror that can occur when an exhausted intern or resident faces a cardiac arrest or other emergency. She describes an incident in her own career in her first week as a medical consultant. After her beeper went off, she rushed to the bedside of the patient (with interns and residents crowding around waiting for her directions), and her mind temporarily blanked. She explains how the fear of making a wrong decision stalks even an experienced doctor, especially when overworked and tired. To function, they must be able to suppress their emotions without losing the empathetic doctor-patient connection that is an essential part of the healing process. However, the constant stress can lead to temporary or permanent doctor burnout. Ofri also deals with what happens when doctors make mistakes. The loss of self-confidence and shame they feel is scarring, even when they receive support from superiors.
An invaluable guide for doctors and patients on how to “recognize and navigate the emotional subtexts” of the doctor-patient relationship.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8070-7332-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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