The Finest Traditions of My Calling
One Physicians Search for the Renewal of Medicine
by Abraham M. Nussbaum
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Pub Date Mar 22 2016 | Archive Date Mar 07 2016
Description
A deeply concerned physician reflects on today’s doctor-patient relationships and offers a compelling vision of a better way to practice medicine
Patients and doctors alike are keenly aware that the medical world is in the midst of great change. We live in an era of continuous healthcare reforms, many of which focus on high volume, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. This compelling, thoughtful book is the response of a practicing psychiatrist who explains how population-based reforms have diminished the relationship between doctors and patients, to the detriment of both. As an antidote to failed reforms and an alternative to stubbornly held traditions, Dr. Abraham M. Nussbaum suggests ways that doctors and patients can learn what it means to be ill and to seek medical assistance.
Using a variety of riveting stories from his own and others' experiences, the author develops a series of metaphors to explore a doctor's role in different healthcare reform scenarios: scientist, technician, author, gardener, teacher, servant, and witness. Each role influences what a physician sees when examining a person as a patient. Dr. Nussbaum cautions that true healthcare reform can happen only when those who practice medicine can see, and be seen by, their patients as fellow creatures. His memoir makes a hopeful appeal for change, and his insights reveal the direction that change must take.
Abraham M. Nussbaum, M.D., directs the adult inpatient psychiatry unit at Denver Health, where he also trains medical students and residents. He is assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, and author of the best-selling The Pocket Guide to the DSM-5 Diagnostic Exam. He lives in Denver, CO.
Patients and doctors alike are keenly aware that the medical world is in the midst of great change. We live in an era of continuous healthcare reforms, many of which focus on high volume, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. This compelling, thoughtful book is the response of a practicing psychiatrist who explains how population-based reforms have diminished the relationship between doctors and patients, to the detriment of both. As an antidote to failed reforms and an alternative to stubbornly held traditions, Dr. Abraham M. Nussbaum suggests ways that doctors and patients can learn what it means to be ill and to seek medical assistance.
Using a variety of riveting stories from his own and others' experiences, the author develops a series of metaphors to explore a doctor's role in different healthcare reform scenarios: scientist, technician, author, gardener, teacher, servant, and witness. Each role influences what a physician sees when examining a person as a patient. Dr. Nussbaum cautions that true healthcare reform can happen only when those who practice medicine can see, and be seen by, their patients as fellow creatures. His memoir makes a hopeful appeal for change, and his insights reveal the direction that change must take.
Abraham M. Nussbaum, M.D., directs the adult inpatient psychiatry unit at Denver Health, where he also trains medical students and residents. He is assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, and author of the best-selling The Pocket Guide to the DSM-5 Diagnostic Exam. He lives in Denver, CO.
Advance Praise
“His insightful polemic reveals that current reforms in medicine are missing an essential element.”—Publishers Weekly
“His generous narrative offers clarity and direction on how the industry can avoid sacrificing humanity to the trappings of an industrialized, unsympathetic, automated version of health care. A revealing and stirring directive aiming to heal medicine from the inside out.”—Kirkus Reviews
“The author has produced a work that addresses the ‘fall from grace’ of the medical profession. It is rich with nuanced details and stories of physician and patient lives. He moves through his territory with delightful stride.”—Thomas Duffy, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine
“In a time when hospitals threaten to become factories and doctors seem no more than factory farmers, Nussbaum helps us see that there is an alternative. That alternative turns out to be exemplified in the stories he wonderfully tells of what he has learned from the sick. Hopefully his book will be widely read because it has important practical as well as theoretical implications.”—Stanley Hauerwas, author of The Work of Theology
“A clear-eyed and thoughtful (and interesting!) analysis of where medicine is right now, how it got here, why an alternative ‘vision’ is preferable, and some gestures toward what that alternative might be and might promise. The stories are presented respectfully . . . and as real stories, not just case study examples.”—Margaret Mohrmann, M.D., Ph.D., University of Virginia
“Occasionally someone speaks up in the midst of our clamoring arguments about social problems and manages to do the simple and extraordinary thing that makes all the difference: they ask the right questions. Reading The Finest Traditions of My Calling, I couldn't help but see Nussbaum as a Martin Luther of health care and this book is his 95 theses. May true reform ensue.”—Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, author of Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People
“An eye-opening journey into the rapidly industrializing world of modern healthcare. Nussbaum steadfastly reminds us that true ‘quality’ needs to include the humanity of the patient and the caregiver. A compelling read.”—Danielle Ofri, M.D., Ph.D., author of What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
“Abraham Nussbaum has written a wonderful book. It is at times deeply moving, at times delightfully funny, always insightful, and deliciously subversive of the elite medical establishment that believes it can reform medicine by passing laws, tweaking policy, manipulating behavior, or offering courses in medical humanism. He joins the ranks of Atul Gawande and Abraham Verghese as a superlative-physician commentator on the state of twenty-first century medicine, and he is probably the best diagnostician of the three. A must-read for physicians, medical ethicists, policy makers, and anyone concerned with what it means to be a physician today.”—Daniel Sulmasy, M.D., Ph.D., The University of Chicago
“His generous narrative offers clarity and direction on how the industry can avoid sacrificing humanity to the trappings of an industrialized, unsympathetic, automated version of health care. A revealing and stirring directive aiming to heal medicine from the inside out.”—Kirkus Reviews
“The author has produced a work that addresses the ‘fall from grace’ of the medical profession. It is rich with nuanced details and stories of physician and patient lives. He moves through his territory with delightful stride.”—Thomas Duffy, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine
“In a time when hospitals threaten to become factories and doctors seem no more than factory farmers, Nussbaum helps us see that there is an alternative. That alternative turns out to be exemplified in the stories he wonderfully tells of what he has learned from the sick. Hopefully his book will be widely read because it has important practical as well as theoretical implications.”—Stanley Hauerwas, author of The Work of Theology
“A clear-eyed and thoughtful (and interesting!) analysis of where medicine is right now, how it got here, why an alternative ‘vision’ is preferable, and some gestures toward what that alternative might be and might promise. The stories are presented respectfully . . . and as real stories, not just case study examples.”—Margaret Mohrmann, M.D., Ph.D., University of Virginia
“Occasionally someone speaks up in the midst of our clamoring arguments about social problems and manages to do the simple and extraordinary thing that makes all the difference: they ask the right questions. Reading The Finest Traditions of My Calling, I couldn't help but see Nussbaum as a Martin Luther of health care and this book is his 95 theses. May true reform ensue.”—Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, author of Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People
“An eye-opening journey into the rapidly industrializing world of modern healthcare. Nussbaum steadfastly reminds us that true ‘quality’ needs to include the humanity of the patient and the caregiver. A compelling read.”—Danielle Ofri, M.D., Ph.D., author of What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
“Abraham Nussbaum has written a wonderful book. It is at times deeply moving, at times delightfully funny, always insightful, and deliciously subversive of the elite medical establishment that believes it can reform medicine by passing laws, tweaking policy, manipulating behavior, or offering courses in medical humanism. He joins the ranks of Atul Gawande and Abraham Verghese as a superlative-physician commentator on the state of twenty-first century medicine, and he is probably the best diagnostician of the three. A must-read for physicians, medical ethicists, policy makers, and anyone concerned with what it means to be a physician today.”—Daniel Sulmasy, M.D., Ph.D., The University of Chicago
Marketing Plan
A conversation with Abraham M. Nussbaum, M.D.
What do you hope readers will take away from the experience of reading The Finest Traditions of My Calling?
I hope readers will learn that healthcare reform is not just a question of who should have access to care and who should pay for it, but also of our desire for a favorable outcome when a physician meets a person as a patient. Reformers believe the problem with medicine is that it does not consistently and safely deliver the best treatments. And the solution is to transform the delivery of medical care using processes pioneered in high-risk industries like aviation, mining, and automobile manufacturing: run hospitals like factories, optimized for efficiency and effectiveness. But factories make things, not people.
How might your book help change the practice of medicine?
I hope to shift the conversation from the reform of healthcare systems to the renewal of medical practice. We need to envision hospitals and clinics not as factories but as cultural spaces such as schools and gardens, restaurants, and gyms, all of which require human relationships for their operation.
What are examples of the roles physicians and patients assume when they interact?
Physicians are like scientists who want to know how the body works; technicians who control it; authors who tell its story; gardeners who carefully tend it; teachers who help patients achieve what they could not on their own; and servants who give of themselves for the sake of their patients.
What do you hope readers will take away from the experience of reading The Finest Traditions of My Calling?
I hope readers will learn that healthcare reform is not just a question of who should have access to care and who should pay for it, but also of our desire for a favorable outcome when a physician meets a person as a patient. Reformers believe the problem with medicine is that it does not consistently and safely deliver the best treatments. And the solution is to transform the delivery of medical care using processes pioneered in high-risk industries like aviation, mining, and automobile manufacturing: run hospitals like factories, optimized for efficiency and effectiveness. But factories make things, not people.
How might your book help change the practice of medicine?
I hope to shift the conversation from the reform of healthcare systems to the renewal of medical practice. We need to envision hospitals and clinics not as factories but as cultural spaces such as schools and gardens, restaurants, and gyms, all of which require human relationships for their operation.
What are examples of the roles physicians and patients assume when they interact?
Physicians are like scientists who want to know how the body works; technicians who control it; authors who tell its story; gardeners who carefully tend it; teachers who help patients achieve what they could not on their own; and servants who give of themselves for the sake of their patients.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780300211405 |
| PRICE | $28.50 (USD) |
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