To understand this remarkable trend, Charles R. Morris "embedded" himself with a surgical team at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, one of the world's premier cardiac surgery and transplant centers. Given unprecedented access, Morris witnessed sophisticated operations and observed the tense meetings where surgeons relentlessly criticize their own performance. In thrilling detail, Morris recounts a late-night against-the-clock "harvest run" to secure a precious transplantable organ; the heart-breaking story of a child's failed transplant; a trainee surgeon's brutal daily regimen; and much more. Along the way, Morris documents the fifty years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars that have been expended on creating a reliable mechanical heart, and he steps back to reflect on how doctors think and how they judge each other, what is really driving health care costs, and the future of health care policy in America.

    For all his expertise, he admits he’s still terrified that “someone will keep something from me, and when they tell me the truth, I’ll be useless.”Treating other physicians has become one of Shapiro’s specialties. When the obstetrician Amelia Sorvino seeks his help—distraught that her own medical error could have injured a patient’s baby— Shapiro finds his talents as counselor and healer pushed to their limits. Session by session, he works to discover the sources of Amelia’s anguish--for his own sake as much as hers: he’s familiar with the burden of a doctor’s guilt, and he has seen how loss and trauma, if unchecked, can echo from generation to generation in a family. In this probing, intensely personal memoir, the words “Physician, heal thyself” assume a fresh and moving urgency.

    This is not the full 200+ page book. This concise summary of Gawande’s manifesto will convey everything you need to know about how and why checklists are so effective and how to successfully compose your own checklists. These checklists will improve your level of success in any field or activity you are trying to achieve excellence in. Put yourself head and shoulders above the competition with this simple, intuitive tool. Not convinced that a checklist is sophisticated enough for your particular goal? Gawande presents case studies showing the effectiveness of the checklist in a range of complex environments from surgery to aviation, engineering to emergency response, venture capitalism to disease control. Imagine if you could substantially eradicate your own human fallibility with such a simple tool! By engaging with the simple concepts in this short guide you will be able to devise and implement the checklists that will ensure your peak performance in every area of your life.

    Highly intelligent, athletic and a gifted musician, she was destined to excel in whichever field she chose to pursue. At the age of 16, Emily was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF2) and less than a month later, she was in hospital and fighting for her life. Over the coming years, NF2 would steal her education, her smile, her hearing, her ability to walk. With her life plans in ruins, Emily struggled to find meaning and identity. Good things in her life weren't good any more. Because they were no longer there. With gentle humour and heart-breaking honesty, Emily shares her story. Slowly and painfully, she discovers value in new places, seeing the rainbows in the silence.

    Julie Devaney takes us on a journey through the health care system as she is diagnosed and treated for ulcerative colitis. In and out of emergency rooms in Vancouver and Toronto, she’s poked, prodded, and abandoned to a closet at one point, bearing the helplessness and indignities of a system that at best confuses a patient into silence.Raw, harrowing, and darkly funny, Julie Devaney argues convincingly for fixes to the system and better training for all medical personnel. As she recovers, she sets out to do just that: setting up a gurney on stage at workshops and conferences across the country to teach Bedside Manners 101 and to advocate for repairs to the system.Part memoir, part love story, part revolutionary manifesto, My Leaky Body is politically astute, gooey like cake batter, and raw like ulcerated bowels. Devaney writes the book that will heal her aching heart and relax her strictured rectum as she weaves stories from professional and public interactions with tales from her gurney.

    This short and accessible introduction provides an invaluable tool with which to think about the ethical values that lie at the heart of medicine.Tony Hope deals with thorny moral issues, including euthanasia and the morality of killing. He also explores political questions, such as how we can make sure health care resources are distributed fairly. Each chapter in the book considers a different issue, for example, genetics, modern reproductive technologies, resource allocation, mental health, and medical research. Each section also discusses controversial questions such as: Who should have access to reproductive technology? Is it right to fund expensive drug treatment for individuals? Should treatment for mental illness be imposed on patients without their consent? Considering a wide range of questions of medical ethics, this Very Short Introduction will help to explain some of the confusing issues facing the field of medicine today.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    But what seemed a perfect life was shattered when she went into labor four months early, delivering her one-pound, eleven-ounce daughter, Andie.The first time Kasey was wheeled into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), nothing prepared her for what she saw: a tiny, fragile baby in a tangle of tubes and wires. All at once, Kasey was confronted with a new and terrifying reality that would test the limits of love, family, and motherhood.In this riveting, honest, and often humorous memoir, Preemie chronicles the journey of one tiny baby’s tenacious struggle to hold on to life and the mother who ultimately grew with her. From hospital waiting rooms to the offices of alternative practitioners, from ski slopes to Symphony Hall, Kasey tries to make meaning of her daughter’s birth and eventually comes to learn that gifts come in all sizes and all forms, and sometimes... right on time.

    He has been a hospital surgeon, a ship's physician, an air-ambulance doctor, and a trauma surgeon. He has worked in locations as diverse as England, Burma, Eritrea, the Amazon, Mozambique, and the United States. In this story of unforgettable adventure and tragedy, Dr. Kaplan explores the great challenge of his career -- to maintain his humanity even when that option does not seem possible. The Dressing Station is a haunting and elucidating look into the nature of human violence, the shattering contradictions of war, and the complicated role of medicine in this modern world. "A unique mix of biography and reportage, both personal and clinical," it is "a rare insight into the mind of a surgeon." -- Sue Cullinan, Time "Eloquent ... Beautifully written ... Provides a startling glimpse of battlefield surgery in those conflicts that CNN does not cover." -- Abraham Verghese, The New York Times Book Review "Kaplan ... has a keen sense of the smaller moments that leaven the agonies of daily life." -- Julian B. Orenstein, The Washington Post

    A renowned behavioral neurologist provides insights to some of the most curious spiritual questions we all face.Is there a God?It's a question billions of people have asked since the dawn of time. You would think by now we'd have a satisfactory, universal answer. No such luck...Or maybe we do and we just need to look in the right place. For Dr. Jay Lombard that place is the brain, and more importantly the mind, that center of awareness and consciousness that creates reality.In The Mind of God, Dr. Lombard employs case studies from his own behavioral neurology practice to explore the spiritual conundrums that we all ask ourselves: What is the nature of God? Does my life have purpose? What's the meaning of our existence? Are we free? What happens to us when we die?For Lombard, these metaphysical questions are a jumping-off point for exploring the brain in search of the seat of the soul. It is neuroscience, the author contends, and how we and our brains interpret what's going on around us that can lead us to a deeper and more fulfilling faith.Mixing his personal experiences in the medical field (including compelling cases such as the male patient who really thought he was pregnant and a woman who literally scared herself to death) along with his own visionary insight into spiritual experience, Lombard has much to tell us about the nature and power of belief--and what we can do to focus our beliefs in a positive direction. If you want to find more meaning in your life or are searching for a deeper understanding of why we believe what we believe, then this book can lead to an exciting transformation in the way you see and understand the world around you. With cutting-edge research and provocative case studies, renowned behavioral neurologist provides insights to some of the most curious spiritual questions of mortality.

    From difficult diagnoses, irreverent colleagues, brave survivors, and examining room embarrassments, Watts uncovers the world of contemporary medicine and shares the emotional truths and practical realities at the heart of every doctor-patient relationship.Watts’s warmhearted and understanding attitude toward his patients—and their foibles—is evident on every page of this surprising, poignant, and intimate look inside the life of a doctor who could very easily be your own.

    It offers complete coverage of the basics of hematologic morphology, including examination of the peripheral blood smear, basic maturation of the blood cell lines, and discussions of a variety of clinical disorders. Over 400 photomicrographs, schematic diagrams, and electron micrographs visually clarify hematology from normal cell maturation to the development of various pathologies.Normal Newborn Peripheral Blood Morphology chapter covers the unique normal cells found in neonatal blood.A variety of high-quality schematic diagrams, photomicrographs, and electron micrographs visually reinforce your understanding of hematologic cellular morphology.Spiral binding and compact size make this book easy to use in a laboratory setting.Coverage of common cytochemical stains, along with a summary chart for interpretation, aids in classifying malignant and benign leukoproliferative disorders.Morphologic abnormalities are presented in chapters on erythrocytes and leukocytes, along with a schematic description of each cell, to provide correlations to various disease states.Body Fluids chapter covers the other fluids found in the body besides blood, using images from cytocentrifuged specimens.Updated information on the subtypes of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) helps you recognize variant forms of CLL you may encounter in the lab.

    Murray's best-selling book "the most colorful and fun text to read in medical microbiology." Now it's back in an updated New Edition-and it's as succinct, user-friendly, and authoritative as ever. Readers will continue to enjoy its lucid discussions of how microbes cause disease in humans. Expert coverage of basic principles, the immune response, laboratory diagnosis, bacteriology, virology, mycology, and parasitology ensures they understand all the facts vital to the practice of medicine today. More than 550 brilliant full-color images make complex information easy to understand and illustrate the appearance of disease.The smart way to study!Elsevier titles with STUDENT CONSULT will help you master difficult concepts and study more efficiently in print and online! Perform rapid searches. Integrate bonus content from other disciplines. Download text to your handheld device. And a lot more. Each STUDENT CONSULT title comes with full text online, a unique image library, case studies, USMLE style questions, and online note-taking to enhance your learning experience.

    You might think that this would leave us with a bleak choice— either to devote more of our national budget to health care or to make do with less of it. But there’s another path. In this provocative book, Jonathan Bush, cofounder and CEO of athenahealth, calls for a revolution in health care to give customers more choices, freedom, power, and information, and at far lower prices. With humor and a tell-it-likeit- is style, he picks up insights and ideas from his days as an ambulance driver in New Orleans, an army medic, and an entrepreneur launching a birthing start-up in San Diego. In struggling to save that dying business, Bush’s team created a software program that eventually became athenahealth, a cloud-based services company that handles electronic medical records, billing, and patient communications for more than fifty thousand medical providers nationwide. Bush calls for disruption of the status quo through new business models, new payment models, and new technologies that give patients more control of their care and enhance the physicianpatient experience. He shows how this is already happening. From birthing centers in Florida to urgent care centers in West Virginia, upstarts are disrupting health care by focusing on efficiency, innovation, and customer service. Bush offers a vision and plan for change while bringing a breakthrough perspective to the debates surrounding Obamacare. You’ll learn how: • Well-intended government regulations prop up overpriced incumbents and slow the pace of innovation. • Focused, profit-driven disrupters are chipping away at the dominance of hospitals by offering routine procedures at lower cost. • Scrappy digital start-ups are equipping providers and patients with new apps and technologies to access medical data and take control of care. • Making informed choices about the care we receive and pay for will enable a more humane and satisfying health care system to emerge. Bush’s plan calls for Americans not only to demand more from providers but also to accept more responsibility for our health, to weigh risks and make hard choices—in short, to take back control of an industry that is central to our lives and our economy.

    This practical text reviews basic microbiology and how to approach the pharmacotherapy of a patient with a presumed infection. It also contains concise Drug Class Reviews with an explanation of the characteristics of various classes of antibacterial drugs and antifungal drugs. Antibiotics Simplified, Third Edition simplifies learning infectious disease pharmacotherapy and condenses the many facts that are taught about antibiotics into one quick reference guide. This guide will help students learn the characteristics of antibiotics and why an antibiotic is useful for an indication. With an understanding of the characteristics of the antibiotics, students will be able to make a logical choice to treat an infection more easily. With helpful figures and flow charts, Drug Class Reviews, a Spectra of Activity chart, and an index for reference, this is an ideal handbook for students as well as practicing pharmacists, physicians, and other clinicians!

    For many, it is as if they are traveling to someplace entirely new and they must go there alone, with only faded directions back to their old lives. Often, even their loved ones can only guess at what they must be experiencing.The Lonely Patient is a clear-eyed and deeply affecting examination of the inner life of those grappling with illness. It looks into the chasm between the well and the sick by exploring and giving voice to the often unarticulated aspects of illness, offering people with illness—and their family and friends—a frank and intelligent discussion of how to negotiate the psychological and emotional aspects of what they are going through.Michael Stein, M.D., a professor of medicine at Brown University Medical School as well as an acclaimed novelist, uses the stories of a number of patients, including that of his beloved, terminally ill brother-in-law, Richard, to consider the personal narrative of sickness. What sets Stein's book apart is his intimate scrutiny of the uniqueness of each patient's experience, which he breaks into four parts—betrayal, terror, loss, and loneliness—and renders each in such a way that he opens a dialogue about our expectations of health and, after its shocking disappearance, of illness.Beautifully written and keenly insightful, The Lonely Patient is a valuable book for patients and their caregivers—as well as a probing inquiry into a universal experience.