Poignant, passionate and powerful | |
A piece of my mind. Roxanne K Young (editor). Chicago: AMA Press, 2000 (332 pp.). ISBN 1-57947-082-3. |
There are times when one is prepared to believe that Americans are among the nicest people on earth. Their medical essays can be poignant, passionate, powerful, full of pathos, and medical in the broadest vocational sense. The essays presented in this book are from a section of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) called "A piece of my mind". In it, clinicians record their experiences and reflect on them. No wonder the quality is so high, only one in 10 articles submitted are published. Successive editors of JAMA, to their great credit, have recognised the virtue of this series and have fought to retain it. Other journals have imitated this medico-literary initiative, but none have surpassed it. The topics covered in the book go to the heart of that blossoming subject in medical education often called medical humanities. This is all about the art of being a doctor: the challenges, the doubts, the suffering, the satisfactions, and let's be frank, the glory of the medical profession. So put aside your Talley and O'Connor; close your Harrisons! Rather, commune with other doctors who share your medical ethos and culture, men and women who have "been there" and are able to communicate their reflections on those experiences. This book alone would supply material for several medical humanities courses. Another attraction of the book, for busy doctors, is that each piece is short. These essays are diverse and moving, some arrestingly so. Not one of them is dull or prosaic, and all give strong evidence of the centrality of narrative in medical practice. So often, in the writing of our clinical histories, we train ourselves to tune out all but the skeletal diagnosis-related story. Here is a book that will enrich our practice of medicine. Ben Haneman
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