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(47 reviews)
Author: Brendan Reilly
ISBN : B00A28GTLY
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Format: PDF, EPUB
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An epic story told by a unique voice in American medicine, One Doctor describes life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physician. In riveting first-person prose, Dr. Brendan Reilly takes us to the front lines of medicine today. Whipsawed by daily crises and frustrations, Reilly must deal with several daunting challenges simultaneously: the extraordinary patients under his care on the teeming wards of a renowned teaching hospital; the life-threatening illnesses of both of his ninety-year-old parents; and the tragic memory of a cold case from long ago that haunts him still. As Reilly’s patients and their families survive close calls, struggle with heartrending decisions, and confront the limits of medicine’s power to cure, One Doctor lays bare a fragmented, depersonalized, business-driven health-care system where real caring is hard to find. Every day, Reilly sees patients who fall through the cracks and suffer harm because they lack one doctor who knows them well and relentlessly advocates for their best interests.
Filled with fascinating characters in New York City and rural New England—people with dark secrets, mysterious illnesses, impossible dreams, and many kinds of courage—One Doctor tells their stories with sensitivity and empathy, reminding us of professional values once held dear by all physicians. But medicine has changed enormously during Reilly’s career, for both better and worse, and One Doctor is a cautionary tale about those changes. It is also a hopeful, inspiring account of medicine’s potential to improve people’s lives, Reilly’s quest to understand the “truth” about doctoring, and a moving testament to the difference one doctor can make.Direct download links available for Free Download One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
- File Size: 1150 KB
- Print Length: 465 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1476726299
- Publisher: Atria Books; 1 edition (September 3, 2013)
- Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00A28GTLY
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,224 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Special Topics > History - #12
in Books > Medical Books > History - #13
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- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Special Topics > History - #12
in Books > Medical Books > History - #13
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Medical
Free Download One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
When I read the part about Martha, the elderly patient who is becomes floridly delirious, I recognized it immediately. I had watch my elderly aunt slip into a similar horrible state. She had been receiving her second round of chemo for pancreatic cancer. They were successfully treating her pancreatic cancer however her mental state continued on a fast downward spiral. She developed a pain in her hip that could not be explained and demanded pain medication. She managed to get narcotics and was taking several over the counter medications as well.
Finally, they hospitalized her and diagnosed dementia. I was made her power of attorney and over several months, I watched her mental state deteriorate and she would spin wildly out of control at times. Over time, her mental condition has improved but it has been a long horrible process for all involved in her care.
My 86 year old mother fell and was operated on for sub-acute hematoma. The night they moved her from the hospital to the acute rehab center, the nurse called. My mother was extremely agitated and the nurse was concerned. Remembering Martha in One Doctor, I told the nurse I was on my way. There it was again, my mother was beginning to spin.
Once again, I borrowed from the book. I turned off the TV, dimmed the lights, sat in front of her and spoke in calm, quiet tones and explained over and over what had happened to her and why she was in the hospital. I tried my best to convince her that these strangers meant her no harm and they were trying to help her. I'm not sure if my intervention helped prevent delirium but she was able to get to sleep and the next morning she was her cheerful, confused self again with no recollection of the prior night's terror.
On this first day of 'The Affordable Care Act', I encourage everyone to read this book, we all need that 'One Doctor'.
In reading Dr Reilly's book I thought about a book I had read. Dr Jerome Groopman's, 'How Doctors Think'. Dr Groopman's explains that no one can expect a physician to be infallible, medicine is an uncertain science and every doctor sometimes makes mistakes with diagnoses and treatment. It is the frequency and seriousness of those errors that can be reduced by 'understanding how a doctor thinks and how he or she can think better'. Dr. Reilly goes one better and starts with the patient, listen to the patient, observe and examine the patient. Certainly all of the new technology is wonderful to help with diagnoses and treatment, but it can't always beat the one on one between patient and physician.
In flashbacks Dr. Reilly discusses his most recent challenging patients in 2010, while covering on-call for a two week interlude, in a large teaching hospital in New York City, and then to his career at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, in 1985 in New Hampshire. Hiram Hitchcock had given this hospital to the community in memory of his wife, Mary Hitchcock. In 1985, Dr Reilly had made house calls to his patients who needed them. He was their physician, he knew everything about them, and could see any minor abnormality. He did, however, miss the cause of one of his patient's delirium, and by the time he figured it out the patient had died. Dr Reilly discusses in detail the regrets and guilt physicians have when medical errors are made.
Reflecting on the way medicine was practiced 25 years ago and contrasting today's practice, Dr Reilly discusses some of the 19 patients he and his team round on, on a daily basis.