The Best Care Possible

The Best Care Possible

Author: Ira Byock

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-03-05

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1583335129

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A doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial social issues of our time. It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Though the vast majority of Americans would prefer to die at home—which hospice care provides—many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy to “fight disease and illness at all cost.” Dr. Ira Byock, one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country, argues that how we die represents a national crisis today. To ensure the best possible elder care, Dr. Byock explains we must not only remake our healthcare system but also move beyond our cultural aversion to thinking about death. The Best Care Possible is a compelling meditation on medicine and ethics told through page-turning life-or-death medical drama. It has the power to lead a new national conversation.


How Doctors Think

How Doctors Think

Author: Jerome Groopman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2008-03-12

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0547348630

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On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong—with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can—with our help—avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.


What Doctors Feel

What Doctors Feel

Author: Danielle Ofri, MD

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0807073334

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“A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician” that explores the doctor-patient relationship, the flaws in our health care system, and how doctors’ emotions impact medical care (Boston Globe) 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. 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 understanding doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice can make all the difference on giving and getting the best medical care. Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Dr. Danielle 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. Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. 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. 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. Ofri also reveals that doctors cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness.


One Doctor

One Doctor

Author: Brendan Reilly

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-09-03

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1476726299

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"A first-person narrative that takes readers inside the medical profession as one doctor solves real-life medical mysteries"--Provided by publisher.


Medical Humor

Medical Humor

Author: Thomas F Shubnell Ph D

Publisher: Thomas F. Shubnell

Published: 2008-09-24

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1440415749

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Laughter is an orgasm triggered by the intercourse of sense and nonsense. Pain killers are released during a deep laugh and stress hormones are decreased. A good laugh is truly good for the heart, soul, and brain. Read over three hundred pages of great medical humor, jokes, anecdotes, quips, and have a good laugh.


Doctor You

Doctor You

Author: Jeremy Howick

Publisher: Quercus

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1635060796

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Award-winning Oxford University researcher Dr. Jeremy Howick draws on the latest peer-reviewed medical studies to arm readers with scientific evidence that will empower them to make sensible choices about what drugs to take, what drugs to give their children, and when (and when not) to simply let the body do its thing. "READ THIS BREAKTHROUGH BOOK!" --DEEPAK CHOPRA The miracles of modern medicine--and our overreliance on prescription drugs and surgical procedures--have obscured the evolutionary ability of the body to heal itself, as Dr. Jeremy Howick explains in this groundbreaking book. Wealthy countries have become highly dependent on medical intervention: On average, one-fifth of all Americans, half of the elderly British, and two-thirds of older Canadians take at least five prescription drugs per day, their lives a nonstop ritual of pill popping and managing side effects. One in ten people takes antidepressants, and millions of boys who can't sit still in school are prescribed methamphetamines. Skyrocketing global healthcare costs render this overmedication increasingly unaffordable. In Doctor You, Howick explains that the abundance of modern drugs and technologies has blinded us to the fact that the human body produces its own drugs that can treat pain, is capable of curing itself of many physical ailments as well as a surgeon, and can even combat most mild depression as well as any psychologist. Recent clinical trials clearly show that states of mind affect our health: relaxation, positive thinking, and comfortable social environments all provide measurable health benefits--sometimes as effectively as blockbuster drugs. With a methodical and approachable analysis of modern medicine's overuse of pharmaceutical intervention and the scientific evidence for your body's innate power to heal itself, Doctor You will change the way you think about your health, your body, and your approach to medicine.


The Doctor Stories

The Doctor Stories

Author: William Carlos Williams

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780811209267

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Not only for students and doctors, this volume contains Williams's thirteen doctor stories, several of his most famous poems on medical matters, and The Practice from The Autobiography.


The Best Gift

The Best Gift

Author: Walt MD Larimore

Publisher: Revell

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1493431900

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When Walt Larimore, MD, moved his young family to Kissimmee, Florida, to start a small-town medical practice in 1985, he had no idea he was embarking on an enterprise that would change his life in ways both large and small. Dr. Larimore shared some of these heartwarming and heartbreaking tales in The Best Medicine. Now he offers up more charming stories of his time as a family physician in a rural, small-yet-growing town in The Best Gift. Ideal for anyone wrestling with the inevitable and difficult storms of life, as well as fans of Dr. Larimore's popular Bryson City series, The Best Gift is a tender and insightful collection of stories chronicling one young doctor's spiritual growth as a physician, husband, father, and community member. Filled with characters colorful and crusty, warmhearted and hotheaded, witty and winsome, these captivating stories glow with drama, heartbreak, warmth, love, and humor. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll learn some of life's greatest lessons. And you'll wish Dr. Larimore was your doctor.


Man's 4th Best Hospital

Man's 4th Best Hospital

Author: Samuel Shem

Publisher: Berkley

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1984805363

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The sequel to the highly acclaimed The House of God. Years later, the Fat Man has been given leadership over a new Future of Medicine Clinic at what is now only Man's 4th Best Hospital, and has persuaded Dr. Roy Basch and some of his intern cohorts to join him to teach a new generation of interns and residents.


The Doctor Crisis

The Doctor Crisis

Author: Jack Cochran

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2014-05-06

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1610394445

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Calming fears, alleviating suffering, enhancing and saving lives -- this is what motivates doctors virtually every single day. When the structure and culture in which physicians work are well aligned, being a doctor is a most rewarding job. But something has gone wrong in the physician world, and it is urgent that we fix it. Fundamental flaws in the US health care system make it more difficult and less rewarding than ever to be a doctor. The convergence of a complex amalgam of forces prevents primary care and specialty physicians from doing what they most want to do: Put their patients first at every step in the care process every time. Barriers include regulation, bureaucracy, the liability burden, reduced reimbursements, and much more. Physicians must accept the responsibility for guiding our nation toward a better health care delivery system, but the pathway forward -- amidst jarring changes in our health care system -- is not always clear. In The Doctor Crisis, Dr. Jack Cochran, executive director of The Permanente Federation, and author Charles Kenney show how we can improve health care on a grassroots level, regardless of political policy disputes, by improving conditions for physicians and asking them to take on broader accountability; by calling on physicians to be effective leaders as well as excellent clinicians. The authors clarify the necessary steps required to enable physicians to focus on patient care and offer concrete ideas for establishing systems that place patients' needs above all else. Cochran and Kenney make a compelling case that fixing the doctor crisis is a prerequisite to achieving access to quality and affordable health care throughout the United States.