In a well-documented, panoramic narrative, an insider demystifies what makes many doctors tick.
The former CEO of the Permanente Medical Group takes readers into the world that shapes the medical practitioner’s mindset and lays out necessary changes for a broken system.
By the early 2000s, the U.S. health care system, once a global leader, had become the most expensive and least effective in the developed world. Of course, Covid-19 has only exacerbated the situation. Among the number of factors that have led to our current state of affairs—a situation that implicates everyone from hospital administrators to insurers, regulators, and pharmaceutical giants—Pearl singles out for examination the flawed culture that guides doctors in their practice. Physician culture, writes the author, “elevates intervention over prevention,” resulting in a lack of effective treatment for chronic killers such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and heart disease. In a brightly delineated—and highly disturbing—dissection, Pearl lays out the rituals, rules, and beliefs that often isolate physicians from their colleagues and their patients. The foundation of the culture may rest on concepts of healing, resilience, and artistry, but it also breeds a hierarchical sense of individual exceptionalism, heroism, and invincibility. This entitlement and autonomy often clash with the implementation of advanced diagnostic technology, undercutting the doctor’s sense of status and control. In this new environment, characterized by long hours, lowered pay, diminished decision-making, and erasure of prestige, more and more physicians are experiencing burnout. Pearl sensibly advocates a coevolution of these two streams, taking advantage of a doctor’s experience and independent judgement while tapping into the structural and scientific changes in medical practice. Incorporating peer-reviewed research, personal experience, and anecdotal evidence, the author excoriates overtesting and overprescribing as well as institutionalized racism within the medical community, and he advocates for “broadly available, prepaid, integrated, high-quality healthcare,” a system that is open to change, collaboration, and “safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable” care.
In a well-documented, panoramic narrative, an insider demystifies what makes many doctors tick.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5417-5827-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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