The Doctor Crisis

Author : Jack Cochran,Charles C. Kenney
Publisher : PublicAffairs
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2014-05-06
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781610394444

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The Doctor Crisis by Jack Cochran,Charles C. Kenney Pdf

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.

Author : Jack Cochran
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Health
ISBN : OCLC:1103547346

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The Doctor Crisis by Jack Cochran Pdf

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.

Author : Peter Redfield
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2013-02-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780520955189

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Life in Crisis by Peter Redfield Pdf

Life in Crisis tells the story of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders or MSF) and its effort to "save lives" on a global scale. Begun in 1971 as a French alternative to the Red Cross, the MSF has grown into an international institution with a reputation for outspoken protest as well as technical efficiency. It has also expanded beyond emergency response, providing for a wider range of endeavors, including AIDS care. Yet its seemingly simple ethical goal proves deeply complex in practice. MSF continually faces the problem of defining its own limits. Its minimalist form of care recalls the promise of state welfare, but without political resolution or a sense of well-being beyond health and survival. Lacking utopian certainty, the group struggles when the moral clarity of crisis fades. Nevertheless, it continues to take action and innovate. Its organizational history illustrates both the logic and the tensions of casting humanitarian medicine into a leading role in international affairs.

Author : Andrew Furey
Publisher : Doubleday Canada
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2020-10-13
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780385692625

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Hope in the Balance by Andrew Furey Pdf

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Dr. Andrew Furey, an orthopedic surgeon, was sitting by the fireplace at his home in St John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, watching TV after work, when dreadful images of the aftermath of an earthquake in Haiti burst in on the cosy domestic scene. Human suffering on an epic scale was being documented in real time. Dr. Furey spent a sleepless night, and woke knowing he had to help in some way. In what has been a theme throughout Newfoundland and Labrador's history, he found himself answering the call. Dr. Furey formed a team of three--himself; his wife and pediatric emergency room physician, Dr. Allison Furey; and orthopedic surgeon Will Moores--and together they travelled from to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where they spent a week volunteering. The challenge seemed overwhelming: a multitude of badly injured victims, horrendous working conditions and overstretched aid agencies. But somehow the trio did not lose hope. Instead, they redoubled their efforts. After returning from that first mission, Dr. Furey founded Team Broken Earth--an expert, unbureaucratic, fleet-footed volunteer task force of physicians, nurses and physiotherapists committed to providing aid in Haiti. The organization has continued to grow, recruiting volunteers from all over Canada. It has carried out many more missions to Port-au-Prince and has expanded its operations to other countries like Bangladesh, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Nicaragua. And its mission has expanded in other ways, with education and training for local medical professionals now at the heart of its endeavour. Dr. Andrew Furey tells the story of Team Broken Earth's founding and remarkable work with vivid immediacy and raw honesty. He shares his doubts and failures and moments of near-despair. He explores how his Newfoundland and Labrador upbringing has informed his efforts abroad. And he reaches an optimistic conclusion that will leave readers inspired to bring about positive change in their own lives.

Author : Kenneth M. Ludmerer
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780199744541

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Let Me Heal by Kenneth M. Ludmerer Pdf

Provides a highly engaging, richly contextualized account of the residency system in all its dimensions and analyzes the mutual relationship between residency education and patient care in America.

Author : Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee on Enhancing the Practice of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Subcommittee on Physician Shortage
Publisher : National Academies
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Environmental health personnel
ISBN : NAP:13622

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Addressing the Physician Shortage in Occupational and Environmental Medicine by Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee on Enhancing the Practice of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Subcommittee on Physician Shortage Pdf

Author : Peggy Rothbaum
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2016-06-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0988359294

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I Have Been Talking with Your Doctor by Peggy Rothbaum Pdf

I interviewed 50 doctors using about four pages of questions developed based on the professional research literature on doctoring and my personal professional experience working with doctors. The interviews lasted between 30 minutes and two hours. I sat down with the doctor interviewees, one by one. They talked, I typed. They met with me in between patients, taking breaks to answer emails, texts, phone calls, or deal with emergencies, or after hours, on time off, during paperwork time, or while eating a rushed meal. It is also worth mentioning that some of the doctor interviewees experienced their own traumas close to the time of our interview, such as their own illness or that of someone close to them, or the death of a family member or close friend. Several of them experienced the death of their own child. Remarkably, they all kept working, each one saying that helping others helped them to cope with their own pain. After completing the interviews, I am left with an even deeper understanding of the health care crisis. It is my hope that these interviews will expose an intimate portrait of the gravity and urgency of our healthcare crisis. It is with the utmost gratitude, admiration, and humility, that I thank my doctor interviewees for their help with this task.

Author : Ross A. Slotten
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2020-07-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780226718934

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Plague Years by Ross A. Slotten Pdf

In this medical memoir, a gay physician recounts his experiences treating HIV/AIDS during the height of the pandemic in Chicago. In 1992, Dr. Ross A. Slotten signed more death certificates in Chicago—and, by inference, the state of Illinois—than anyone else. As a family physician, he was trained to care for patients from birth to death, but when he completed his residency in 1984, he had no idea that many of his future patients would be cut down in the prime of their lives. Among those patients were friends, colleagues, and lovers, shunned by most of the medical community because they were gay and HIV positive. Slotten wasn’t an infectious disease specialist, but because of his unique position as both a gay man and a young physician, he became an unlikely pioneer, swept up in one of the worst epidemics in modern history. Plague Years is an unprecedented first-person account of that epidemic, spanning not just the city of Chicago but four continents as well. Slotten provides an intimate yet comprehensive view of the disease’s spread alongside heartfelt portraits of his patients and his own conflicted feelings as a medical professional, drawn from more than thirty years of personal notebooks. In telling the story of someone who was as much a potential patient as a doctor, Plague Years sheds light on the darkest hours in the history of the LGBT community in ways that no previous medical memoir has. Praise for Plague Years “Plague Years is a remarkable book. At once the story of a disease and a very personal and reflective memoir, 200-some pages written in a powerful narrative style at once artful and enlightening. . . . There are many truths in this stunning and important book. And there’s also hope.” —Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune “A plainspoken memoir of the AIDS onslaught by a doctor whose life and career have been spent fighting back at it, Plague Years is humane, harrowing, and—eventually, mercifully, guardedly—hopeful. It was not an easy thing for me to return to the Chicago of those early years of increasing anxiety and fear—who knows how many times Dr. Slotten and I may have unknowingly crossed paths?—but this is an important account, and well worth your time.” —Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times–bestselling author of Dreyer’s English

Author : Robert Meyer, MD,Dan Koeppel
Publisher : Crown
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2021-08-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780593238592

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Every Minute Is a Day by Robert Meyer, MD,Dan Koeppel Pdf

An urgent, on-the-scene account of chaos and compassion on the front lines of ground zero for Covid-19, from a senior doctor at New York City’s busiest emergency room “Remarkable and inspiring . . . We’re lucky to have this vivid firsthand account.”—A. J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically When former New York Times journalist Dan Koeppel texted his cousin Robert Meyer, a twenty-year veteran of the emergency room at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis in the United States, he expected to hear that things were hectic. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being overwhelmed, where do you think you are? Koeppel asked. Meyer’s grave reply—100—was merely the cusp of the crisis that would soon touch every part of the globe. In need of an outlet to process the trauma of his working life over the coming months, Meyer continued to update Koeppel with what he’d seen and whom he’d treated. The result is an intimate record of historic turmoil and grief from the perspective of a remarkably resilient ER doctor. Every Minute Is a Day takes us into a hospital ravaged by Covid-19 and is filled with the stories of promises made that may be impossible to keep, of life or death choices for patients and their families, and of selflessness on the part of medical professionals who put themselves at incalculable risk. As fast-paced and high-tempo as the ER in which it takes place, Every Minute Is a Day is at its core an incomparable firsthand account of unrelenting compassion, and a reminder that every human life deserves a chance to be saved.

Author : Daniel Carlat
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2010-05-18
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1416596356

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Unhinged by Daniel Carlat Pdf

IN THIS STIRRING AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WAKE-UP CALL, psychiatrist Daniel Carlat exposes deeply disturbing problems plaguing his profession, revealing the ways it has abandoned its essential purpose: to understand the mind, so that psychiatrists can heal mental illness and not just treat symptoms. As he did in his hard-hitting and widely read New York Times Magazine article "Dr. Drug Rep," and as he continues to do in his popular watchdog newsletter, The Carlat Psychiatry Report, he writes with bracing honesty about how psychiatry has so largely forsaken the practice of talk therapy for the seductive—and more lucrative—practice of simply prescribing drugs, with a host of deeply troubling consequences. Psychiatrists have settled for treating symptoms rather than causes, embracing the apparent medical rigor of DSM diagnoses and prescription in place of learning the more challenging craft of therapeutic counseling, gaining only limited understanding of their patients’ lives. Talk therapy takes time, whereas the fifteen-minute "med check" allows for more patients and more insurance company reimbursement. Yet DSM diagnoses, he shows, are premised on a good deal less science than we would think. Writing from an insider’s perspective, with refreshing forthrightness about his own daily struggles as a practitioner, Dr. Carlat shares a wealth of stories from his own practice and those of others that demonstrate the glaring shortcomings of the standard fifteen-minute patient visit. He also reveals the dangers of rampant diagnoses of bipolar disorder, ADHD, and other "popular" psychiatric disorders, and exposes the risks of the cocktails of medications so many patients are put on. Especially disturbing are the terrible consequences of overprescription of drugs to children of ever younger ages. Taking us on a tour of the world of pharmaceutical marketing, he also reveals the inner workings of collusion between psychiatrists and drug companies. Concluding with a road map for exactly how the profession should be reformed, Unhinged is vital reading for all those in treatment or considering it, as well as a stirring call to action for the large community of psychiatrists themselves. As physicians and drug companies continue to work together in disquieting and harmful ways, and as diagnoses—and misdiagnoses—of mental disorders skyrocket, it’s essential that Dr. Carlat’s bold call for reform is heeded.

Author : John P. Geyman,John Geyman
Publisher : John Geyman, M.D.
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780983773405

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Breaking Point by John P. Geyman,John Geyman Pdf

Our market-based, profit-driven health care system in the United States has put necessary care increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary Americans. Primary health care, the fundamental foundation of all high-performing health care systems in the world, is a critical but ignored casualty of the current system. Unfortunately, primary care is often poorly understood, even within the health professions. This book describes what has become a crisis in primary care, defines its central role, analyzes the reasons for its decline, and assesses its impacts on patients and families. A constructive approach is presented to rebuild and transform U.S. primary care with the urgent goal to address the nation's problems of access, cost, quality and equity of health care for all Americans.

Author : United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Subcommittee on Health
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1558 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 1971
Category : Government publications
ISBN : UCBK:C051740819

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Health Care Crisis in America, 1971 by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Subcommittee on Health Pdf

Author : Steven Hatch, M.D.
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2017-03-07
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781250085146

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Inferno by Steven Hatch, M.D. Pdf

"Hatch packs a wealth of knowledge into the book...poignant." -Associated Press Dr. Steven Hatch, an infectious disease specialist, first came to Liberia in November 2013 to work at a hospital in Monrovia. Six months later, several of the physicians he had served with were dead or unable to work, and Ebola had become a world health emergency. Inferno is his account of the epidemic that nearly consumed a nation, as well as its deeper origins. Hatch returned with the aid organization International Medical Corps to help establish an Ebola Treatment Unit. Alongside a devoted staff of expats and Liberians in a hastily constructed facility nestled into the jungle, Hatch witnessed the unit's physicians, nurses, other caregivers, and patients selflessly helping others, preserving hope in the face of fear, and maintaining dignity across the divide of health and illness. And, over repeated visits during the course of the outbreak, Hatch came to understand the Ebola catastrophe not only as a contagious virus but as a product of Liberia's violent history and America's role in it. Powerful and clear-eyed, Inferno not only explores a deadly virus and an afflicted country, but also reveals how the Ebola outbreak stoked nativist anxieties that were exploited for political gain in the United States and around the world. In telling one doctor's story, Inferno demonstrates how generations of inequality left Liberia vulnerable to crisis, and how similar circumstances might fuel another plague elsewhere. By understanding and alleviating those circumstances, Hatch writes, we may help smother the fire next time.

Author : Abraham Verghese
Publisher : BookRags
Page : 42 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : AIDS (Disease)
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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My Own Country by Abraham Verghese Pdf

Author : Timothy J. Hoff
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2022-03-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781421443010

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Searching for the Family Doctor by Timothy J. Hoff Pdf

With family doctors increasingly overburdened, bureaucratized, and burned out, how can the field change before it's too late? Over the past few decades, as American medical practice has become increasingly specialized, the number of generalists—doctors who care for the whole person—has plummeted. On paper, family medicine sounds noble; in practice, though, the field is so demanding in scope and substance, and the health system so favorable to specialists, that it cannot be fulfilled by most doctors. In Searching for the Family Doctor, Timothy J. Hoff weaves together the early history of the family practice specialty in the United States with the personal narratives of modern-day family doctors. By formalizing this area of practice and instituting specialist-level training requirements, the originators of family practice hoped to increase respect for generalists, improve the pipeline of young medical graduates choosing primary care, and, in so doing, have a major positive impact on the way patients receive care. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifty-five family doctors, Hoff shows us how these medical professionals have had their calling transformed not only by the indifferent acts of an unsupportive health care system but by the hand of their own medical specialty—a specialty that has chosen to pursue short- over long-term viability, conformity over uniqueness, and protectionism over collaboration. A specialty unable to innovate to keep its membership cohesive and focused on fulfilling the generalist ideal. The family doctor, Hoff explains, was conceived of as a powered-up version of the "country doctor" idea. At a time when doctor-patient relationships are evaporating in the face of highly transactional, fast-food-style medical practice, this ideal seems both nostalgic and revolutionary. However, the realities of highly bureaucratic reimbursement and quality-of-care requirements, educational debt, and ongoing consolidation of the old-fashioned independent doctor's office into corporate health systems have stacked the deck against the altruists and true believers who are drawn to the profession of family practice. As more family doctors wind up working for big health care corporations, their career paths grow more parochial, balkanizing the specialty. Their work roles and professional identities are increasingly niche-oriented. Exploring how to save primary care by giving family doctors a fighting chance to become the generalists we need in our lives, Searching for the Family Doctor is required reading for anyone interested in the troubled state of modern medicine.