Reddit reviews Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

They look clean, but do you know many people get life threatening infections from staying in a hospital?
Better, by Atul Gawande is a great book about how simple routines can make a huge difference in hospitals, and why they're not happening right now.

Here's a story about the price of poor hospital care and the infections that result

When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

Being Mortal - Atul Gawande

Better - Atul Gawande

Honestly anything by Atul Gawande

Start With Why- Simon Sinek (Just finished this one today. Phenomenal read. Not medicine related, but a great perspective on what leadership means and how you can inspire those around you)

The White Coat Investor - James Dahle (Financial literacy is always a good thing)

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I have quite a bit more book suggestions if you're ever curious, but those should keep you busy for a while. Feel free to DM me if you want more!

Everything by Gawande is great. Better has got to be my favorite

Better by Atul Gawande. 288 pages. We read it in our reddit book club. I liked it, and you could easily write up a report about it.

Atul Gawande - Better, Complications, and checklist manifesto.

Sandeep Jauhar - Intern

Jerome Groopman - How doctor's think

Michael Collins - Hot lights, cold steel and Blue collar, blue scrubs

Samuel Shem - House of God

Brian Eule - Match day

Paul Ruggieri - Confessions of a surgeon

Emily R. Transue - On call

Okay so I was in the same position you are in right now. I wanted to read as much as I could because I truly found it fascinating. I read these books and I'm glad I did. These books just give you an idea of how hard doctors work and what the life of a doctor is like. Another recommendation is Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. It has nothing to do with medicine but I read it and I think you should too. He talks about the life of a chef and how perfection and long long hours are demanded of him. I feel like there are some overlaps between the different settings. Chef/doctor and Restaurant/hospital. Anyways, This list should last you a long time. Hope you enjoy.


Edit: Added links.

Hit the Atul Gawande stuff first. He's a tremendous writer, and his books have implications fay beyond the internal mechanics of the medical establishment. I recently finished 'Better', and before I bought the book, I used the Amazon Look Inside feature to read the introduction. I was hooked. http://www.amazon.com/Better-Surgeons-Performance-Atul-Gawande/dp/0312427654/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450735227&sr=8-1&keywords=better+atul+gawande

Have you read Better by Atul Gawande? I read this book today, and there's a whole chapter dedicated to CF and ways that one clinic's CF treatment is so much more effective than any other. I learned a lot from the book, and the CF section might be particularly poignant for you.

Hiring doctors is actually very problematic as well:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312427654

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Both by Atul Gawande.

I really, really recommend you read some of Atul Gawande's work, specifically "Better: A surgeon's notes on performance"

He covers a lot of what you are concerned about in this post at length. When I first became a corpsman I felt like I had way more power than I had knowledge - I had a core group of patients after just four months of school. This book really helped me come to terms with how little I knew, and stressed the importance of seeing these kinds of deficits as learning opportunities.

He's not a PA, but I can't hold that against him ;)

Sure, here goes:

1: Honestly, I do not see very many live patients. My role as a pathologist is mostly making diagnoses based on histological samples (i.e. looking at stuff under a microscope), as well as doing autopsies. That being said, from what I hear from colleagues (and sometimes experience for myself), this fear does indeed exist, and it is unfounded. Doctors will occasionally 'infringe' upon a patients rights, but almost always (with very VERY few exceptions by bad doctors) because it is in the best interest of the patient.

An example: in med school I was shadowing a neurologist/infectious disease specialist/psychiatrist (the guy had 3 specialties but in practice he was a neurologist). He got called in for a consult on a patient who wanted to go home about a day after a bone marrow transplant. This is a very bad, because it opens up a patient to a very significant risk of death. Now the patient kind of understood this, but he had had enough of the hospital and wanted to go home. He truly didn't care anymore. That being said, he did not want to die, but he did want to exercise his right to refuse treatment. The doc said 'sure, let me just get you a shot of antibiotics and came back with some 'antibiotics' that promptly made the patient fall asleep.

The point is: doctors will almost always try to act in the best interest of the patient, but not the best interest as the doctor sees it, but as the patient sees it. It might be worthwhile to read the book 'Better' by Atul Gawande, it really makes these kinds of ethical issues very accesible.

http://www.amazon.com/Better-A-Surgeons-Notes-Performance/dp/0312427654

The best way in my opinion to deal with this fear is by acknowledging it and making things as transparent as possible for patients. The difficulty with that is that patients with mental illness will often have trouble understanding that doctors can be trusted, but a psychologist (as opposed to a psychiatrist) might be able to help here.

2: I have never, personally, wanted to die. I am happy with my life and while I certainly have been tired, somewhat depressed even (but not overly so) and in a bleak mood I really always wanted to keep on living. That being said, I can very easily imagine situations where I would, in the future, like to die. (A long, painful, terminal illness for instance, certain disabilities, or if I for instance for whatever eason took a significant hit to my mental faculties). I find it a reassuring thought that I could fairly easily end my own life if I wanted to. Not that I would ever do so on a whim.

3: This is the big one. I feel medical ethics needs to evolve to a point where the right to make (well informed, logical) decisions (by a person who is not insane) is the absolute highest right, not only on paper but also in practice. The medical community needs to fundementally change (see my earlier responses in this thread), but if and when it does I think this issue will come to the forefront fairly rapidly.