For Physicians
Delivering Doctor Amelia, by Dan Shapiro
It’s a physician’s worst nightmare: you make a mistake, a patient has a poor outcome, and it may be your fault. How do you live with the guilt, the shame, the uncertainty? How do you survive the inherently adversarial process that is the medical malpractice system? And how do you—can you—continue with the practice of medicine? Psychologist Dan Shapiro—himself a cancer survivor and thus well-acquainted with both the power and the shortcomings of doctors—tells the story of his work as a psychotherapist with a physician grappling with all these questions. Together they explore what healing can be for this person and professional.
Long Walk Out of the Woods, by Adam Hill
Adam Hill is a pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician, an associate residency director, and a recovering alcoholic with a history of depression and suicidality. Needless to say, he is personally acquainted with the punitive and stigmatizing system of hoops and barriers that detour suffering physicians away from the help they need. A few years ago, after the death by suicide of yet another physician colleague, he decided it was time to end his own silence. He delivered a grand rounds lecture to 200 people at his hospital, detailing his own story of addiction, depression, and recovery. He has since become a powerful public advocate for physician mental health.
God’s Hotel, by Victoria Sweet
Victoria Sweet practiced medicine at San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital for more than twenty years. Laguna Honda was the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the institution that in the Middle Ages was called the Hôtel-Dieu (God’s Hotel) and that cared for the sick poor. As Dr. Sweet cared for her patients in the lower-tech, human-paced world of Laguna Honda (while simultaneously pursing a doctoral degree in the history of medicine) she found her understanding of medicine transformed by her (re-)discovery, alongside the modern view of the body as a machine to be repaired, of an older understanding of the body as a garden to be tended.
Love in the Time of Medical School, by Sarah Epstein
Sarah Epstein started dating her boyfriend, Brian, when he was studying for the MCAT. They got married during Brian’s fourth year of medical school, by which time she had done a lot of thinking and talking with others about the challenges of being in a relationship with a medical student. Perhaps not coincidentally, she went on to become a couple and family therapist. Her self-published booklet is addressed directly to the significant others of medical students, but includes discussion of relationship and career issues relevant to anyone in a relationship shaped by the subculture of medicine and its particular mix of challenges, stressors, and opportunities.
The “Disabled” Doctor, by Patrick Janik
Persons with disabilities are disproportionately underrepresented among medical students and practicing physicians, as a result of attitudinal and institutional barriers that limit or deny access to the medical profession to otherwise qualified individuals. This is starting to change, as more persons with disabilities challenge those barriers. Patrick Janik is one such person. Following a traumatic brain injury at age 15, he longed to become a doctor but didn’t think it was possible. Long story short, he is now a practicing psychiatrist. His self-published booklet offers wisdom acquired along the way. Chapter 3, “Self-Advocacy and the Art of Persuasion,” is useful reading for anyone, disabled or not.
“Medicine and Nursing are spiritual paths. They are relational and personal; they are more like parenting and falling in love than providing healthcare off some healthcare shelf. ”