Accidental Kindness

A Doctor's Notes on Empathy

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Pub Date 18 Oct 2022 | Archive Date 27 Sep 2022

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Description

We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often look for relief not only from physical symptoms but also from our self-blame. We want from our doctors kindness under any of its many names: empathy, caring, compassion, humanity. We look for safety and forgiveness. But we forget that doctors, too, are often in need of forgiveness—from their patients and from themselves. No doctor enters the medical profession expecting to be unkind or to make mistakes, but because of the complexity of our current medical system and because doctors are human, they often find themselves acting much less kindly than they would like to. Drawing on his work as a primary care physician and a behavioral scientist, Michael Stein artfully examines the often conflicting goals of patients and their doctors. In those differences, Stein recognizes that kindness should not be a patient's forbidden or unrealistic expectation. This book leaves us with new knowledge of and insights into what we might hope for, and what might go wrong, or right, in the most intimate clinical moments.

Michael Stein, M.D., is award-winning author of six novels and four books of nonfiction, most recently Broke: Patients Talk About Money with Their Doctor. He is professor of health policy at the Boston University School of Public Health and executive editor of PublicHealthPost.org.

We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often look for relief not only from physical...


Advance Praise

"With refreshing candor and page-turning prose, Stein dives deep into his own experience as a medical student, internist, son, and patient to look at the ways that doctor-patient interactions can influence care and patient outcomes, and what happens when doctors make mistakes. One of the most powerful, honest, and insightful books I've read by a doctor." —Belle Boggs, author of The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood.

"Michael Stein is a thoughtful, compassionate, exceptional physician, and the same qualities are evident on every page of Accidental Kindness. These intimate and breath-taking patient stories remind me that the essence of medicine is to ease suffering, however and wherever and in whomever it occurs." —Dr. Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Being Human.

"With refreshing candor and page-turning prose, Stein dives deep into his own experience as a medical student, internist, son, and patient to look at the ways that doctor-patient interactions can...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781469671819
PRICE $18.00 (USD)

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