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colorwriter's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
This book was well written and explained the patients stories and the authors experiences in an engaging way without it feeling too dry. It offered helpful insight into what life is like in these rural Healthcare deserts. I did feel that this book was more so telling these patients stories rather than teaching the lessons the author learned from these patients as a healthcare provider.
marissasturtevant's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
emiged's review
4.0
Dr. Audrey Young chronicles her varied clinical experiences through her medical school and training. Participating in a program designed to encourage physicians to consider rural medicine, Dr. Young travels from the bustling Seattle metropolis to the tiny town of Bethel, Alaska, for her first experience with “real” patients. Among the heavily Yupik Eskimo population, she begins to glimpse the depth of the challenges that physicians juggle. She discovers that the social and cultural context is vital to understanding the patient's story, a story that she, as a physician, needs to know in order to help relieve suffering, especially when it comes from a place that is foreign to her own experience.
A later rotation in pediatrics takes Dr. Young to Pocatello, Idaho. Her idealism smacks against reality as she sees cases of domestic abuse and alcoholism, child abuse and shaken-baby syndrome. Despite anything she could do as a physician, she begins to realize “how much that outside world mattered.” Her optimistic desire for a “revolution” where patients “snap off their televisions, quit smoking, protect their homes with dogs rather than guns, and ease down from the excesses of the American diet” is tempered by her realization that life is often messier and grayer than that.
Dr. Young continues to draw touching and poignant vignettes. Of her internal medicine rotation is Missoula, Montana where she learns from Martha and Milo that “there was such a thing as dying a good death.” Of John and Ginny who decide not to continue John's chemotherapy against an aggressive cancer so they can “go back to the ranch and enjoy our lives, have one more wonderful summer.” Of the vast chasm that exists between first-world and third-word when she practices in Swaziland – poverty, lack of basic medical supplies like penicillin, the high incidence of HIV and tuberculosis – but the commonalities of the human element.
Through her experiences across the Pacific Northwest and the world, Dr. Young concludes that “doctoring is a human act.” From her time in Swaziland, in particular, she embraces the belief that “a doctor who sees suffering must act, rejecting the choice of not acting, even when futility and risk run high.” What Patients Taught Me conveys not only her awareness of, but also her reverence for the sacred, intimate, vulnerable moments of every human life.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
A later rotation in pediatrics takes Dr. Young to Pocatello, Idaho. Her idealism smacks against reality as she sees cases of domestic abuse and alcoholism, child abuse and shaken-baby syndrome. Despite anything she could do as a physician, she begins to realize “how much that outside world mattered.” Her optimistic desire for a “revolution” where patients “snap off their televisions, quit smoking, protect their homes with dogs rather than guns, and ease down from the excesses of the American diet” is tempered by her realization that life is often messier and grayer than that.
Dr. Young continues to draw touching and poignant vignettes. Of her internal medicine rotation is Missoula, Montana where she learns from Martha and Milo that “there was such a thing as dying a good death.” Of John and Ginny who decide not to continue John's chemotherapy against an aggressive cancer so they can “go back to the ranch and enjoy our lives, have one more wonderful summer.” Of the vast chasm that exists between first-world and third-word when she practices in Swaziland – poverty, lack of basic medical supplies like penicillin, the high incidence of HIV and tuberculosis – but the commonalities of the human element.
Through her experiences across the Pacific Northwest and the world, Dr. Young concludes that “doctoring is a human act.” From her time in Swaziland, in particular, she embraces the belief that “a doctor who sees suffering must act, rejecting the choice of not acting, even when futility and risk run high.” What Patients Taught Me conveys not only her awareness of, but also her reverence for the sacred, intimate, vulnerable moments of every human life.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
zoenikos's review against another edition
1.0
This book was okay, but not much more. It was an interesting read.
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