A motivational and elucidating appeal for health system reform and a return to patient-centered medical care.
An overview of the complications plaguing an increasingly “by-the-numbers” American health care system provides some possible solutions.
A former physician–turned–health care executive, Fischer-Wright (Tribal Leadership, 2008) examines the imbalance between the business-minded side of medical treatment and the critical, compassionate, humane part (dubbed the “art of medicine”) that she believes “is on life support” these days. While these separate components are important, she stresses, a balance needs to be struck in order for each to be mutually beneficial. The author offers a smoothly written combination of personal and clinical anecdotes, some hitting very close to home, as in her descriptions of her father’s stroke and her husband’s kidney stones. She also adds relevant case notes and intelligent deliberation on how the health care industry should be radically reformed. As a doctor, Fischer-Wright always considered “things like compassion and empathy and effective care that produces good results to be the key to patient satisfaction,” yet her book begins with a chapter on the hospital gown and how medical environment administrators have been attempting to redesign and overhaul the inexpensive apparel to make it more user-friendly and comfortable. The author concurs with the difference it might make to the patient experience yet believes there are much more important ways to improve health care in America. She considers the deterioration of the doctor-patient relationship and its foundation of trust as a key concern. In order to rebuild this component, a paradigm shift must occur away from prioritizing science and business toward patients and the delivery of compassionate, personalized, and humane medical care. Fischer-Wright effectively adopts many different perspectives to demonstrate that the issues facing health care don’t just stem from one source, but from a collective of financial, political, social, and scientific territories. To encompass all demographics of her readership (from young medical students to veteran clinical professionals to the simply curious) in this timely, astute, and pivotal discussion, the author describes the serpentine chronology of a typical medical claim. She makes great use of pop culture, tying together Marcus Welby, M.D. and Star Trek references and Converse high top sneakers and the novels of Michael Crichton. She also employs a keen sense of humor throughout, which keeps the narrative grounded yet accessible and flexible, and concludes with a smart, multipronged strategy that “truly moves American health care in a new direction—one that puts the needs of people at the center of the industry again.” While acknowledging that there are no quick fixes, the author encourages readers to educate themselves and their loved ones on insurance, procedures, personal maintenance, and the myriad pathways of health care. With small, incremental steps forward, she believes true progress will be made toward improving patient-physician relationships, refocusing on personalizing care, and accessing the kind of world-class clinical treatment everyone deserves.
A motivational and elucidating appeal for health system reform and a return to patient-centered medical care.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63331-014-8
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Disruption Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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