Dr. Rana Awdish never imagined that an emergency trip to the hospital would result in hemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. But after first visit, Dr. Awdish spent months fighting for her life, enduring consecutive major surgeries and experiencing multiple overlapping organ failures. At each step of the recovery process, Awdish was faced with something … even more unexpected: repeated cavalier behavior from her fellow physicians–indifference following human loss, disregard for anguish and suffering, and an exacting emotional distance.
Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written, In Shock allows the reader to transform alongside Awidsh and watch what she discovers in our carefully-cultivated, yet often misguided, standard of care. Awdish comes to understand the fatal flaws in her profession and in her own past actions as a physician while achieving, through unflinching presence, a crystalline vision of a new and better possibility for us all.
As Dr. Awdish finds herself up against the same self-protective partitions she was trained to construct as a medical student and physician, she artfully illuminates the dysfunction of disconnection. Shatteringly personal, and yet wholly universal, she offers a brave roadmap for anyone navigating illness while presenting physicians with a new paradigm and rationale for embracing the emotional bond between doctor and patient.
more
I think this book is wonderful, and I hope that those who work in the medical industry read it and take the lessons provided away with them after they finish reading
All doctors should read this book. The author is a doctor and has been a patient and, thus, understands both sides of the medical picture.
This poor woman and her husband went through the kind of hell no one deserves to suffer. Losing their baby was terrible, but to come back literally from death and to have her body’s systems fail her one after another after another. After all that to put herself out there to teach the rest of us what being a doctor truly means….to treat the patient with respect, with dignity, with compassion rather than keeping the wall of doctor/patient that we normally see. It must hurt terribly to allow the patient into your heart with the risk of losing them but I believe that the lessons she teaches us will hopefully bring about on a regular basis, a change in the way doctors are trained and bring about a future of more caring physicians.
Wish I could read it but a glitch in the system prevented my buying it. Bummer. I enjoy anything medical.
An inside look BY a doctor at the fallacies of her profession.
Written from the “other”side of the story. Someone who saw the change was needed and became the instrument of that change despite her many health obstacles. Parts of it were slow and I skimmed through them. A good read though.
Fascinating study of doctor as patient and how this changed her outlook on medicine.
Read this book to learn how doctors are trained and how it often impacts their interactions with patients. The author’s experience as a patient, while also a doctor in the same hospital where she works, is eye opening to her and caused her to change the climate in her hospital. May even give you ideas on how to help your interactions with your doctor. Quite eye opening!
A doctor dissects the problems she perceived with her profession when she was cast as a mortally ill patient. Parts of the story are illuminating, all of it is harrowing. The author makes some sweeping assumptions, poorly supported by anything but her own emotions, that more empathy would have made her care more effective. It pulls at our heart strings as she describes her suffering and the supposed indifference of her colleagues to that suffering. Of course she doesn’t address her lack of direct responsibility for her own care (her being the client of an insurance payer and not the owner hiring others to provide her care). Her story devolves into a one direction tale of her disappointment with the people who saved her life. The author fails to address at all her appalling lack of empathy for the day to day abuse heaped on those that she critiques for the life-saving care they provider her. In the end it is a whiny diatribe from someone who profited from the training, skill, and kindness of others and can’t seem to recognize that blessing for the miasma of victimhood she travels in.
perfect for any pre-med or medical professional, changed my approach to my med studies!