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Like most physicians, Chen, a transplant surgeon and former UCLA faculty member, entered medicine in order to save lives. But as a medical student in the 1980s, she discovered that she had to face death repeatedly and "found disturbing inconsistencies" as she learned from teachers and colleagues "to suspend or suppress any shared human feelings for my dying patients." Chen writes with immaculately honed prose and moral passion as she recounts her quest to overcome "lessons in denial and depersonalization," vividly evoking the paradoxes of end-of-life care in an age of life-preserving treatments. Chen charts her personal and professional rites of passage in dealing with mortality, from her first dissection of a human cadaver, through the first time she pronounces a patient dead, to having to officially took responsibility for the accidental death of a patient in her care. Focusing on the enormous moral and psychological pressures on doctors and on the need for greater empathy in hospital end-of-life care, Chen also reports on signs of change within the profession, stemming from both criticisms of training and institutions and from physicians' initiatives to bring a greater sense of shared humanity to their work. Announced first printing of 75,000.
Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health
Overview
There is a vast popular literature about physician ineptitude with dying and death, whose doctor authors often cite their own cases to make points. Chen takes the logical next step by recounting only her immediate experience with dying and dead persons and what she learned from it. She starts with her first dead "patient," the woman she dissected in anatomy class. She continues with the many, many deaths she witnessed as an intern and resident and later. She poses them against the backdrop of being encouraged to disengage emotionally from patients and to opt always for prolonging life. She recounts, with pain, her own failures to "be there" for dying patients and their loved ones. She notes recent medical education reforms aimed at helping physicians accept death and prepare patients and loved ones for it. She recalls, with wonder, good physician dealings with death--those of doctors she learned from and, finally, her own. A graceful, precise, and empathetic writer enthralled by her work, Chen imparts much about medical schooling and surgery, too.
Customer Review
Most of us are afraid of dying. Most of us probably do not consider that our doctors are afraid to let us die, when we are in their care. Dr. Chen lays out the struggle doctors face, whether to continue to treat and treat and treat, even if a "cure' is unlikely, or allow an individual to end her days with a bit of piece, as well as the lack of training available to doctors, in the area of end of life, and the improvements being made.
An informative read for those not in the medical profession, giving us an inside peek at what is happening in the other side of the medical chart. I highly recommend to anyone, because we will all eventually need a doctor in our lives.
Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health
