Attending Children: A Doctor's Education

by Margaret E. Mohrmann

Overview

In a fast-paced, complicated, and evermore dangerous world it is easy to become self-absorbed and consumed with our own problems. There is one place, however, where we put our self-centered concerns aside, and our deep, common humanity is profoundly touched. That place is where sick children dwell.

It is no less difficult—and perhaps even more difficult in many ways—for physicians who have chosen to attend to the health and well-being of gravely ill or dying children. Margaret Mohrmann has devoted most of her professional life to them, and in Attending Children she shares the remarkable education those children and their families have given her. Her narratives are both painful and hopeful, tragic and funny, full of remarkable characters and sometimes bizarre families.

Mohrmann has sifted through her thirty years as a pediatrician, and with poignancy, humor, and uncompromising honesty, she shares her sometimes stumbling but always deeply caring journey through a land where, sometimes, small hands have to be let go too soon. She introduces us to not only the physical challenges she, her colleagues, and her patients encounter, but the spiritual ones as well.

Attending Children is a unique experience as Mohrmann takes the reader on a doctor's rounds over many years to meet the faces and the struggles, the heartaches and the joys of being a pediatrician. In the case of Margaret Mohrmann and her patients, no one could ask for better teachers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781589012455
Publisher:	Georgetown University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	345,591
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Margaret E. Mohrmann, MD, is associate professor of religious studies and medical education at the University of Virginia and is the author of Medicine as Ministry: Reflections on Suffering, Ethics, and Hope.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: Attending

Part I: Listening

Chapter 1: Telling Death

Chapter 2: Pain and Longing

Chapter 3: Variations on the Theme of Competence

Chapter 4: Being Mickey's Doctor Chapter 5: Another Kind of Courage

Part II: Accompanying

Chapter 6: Being There

Chapter 7: Intensive Care

Chapter 8: Power and Powerlessness Chapter 9: Letting Go and Going On

Chapter 10: Suspending Disbelief

Chapter 11: God Will Find a Way

Part III: Waiting

Chapter 12: Presumptuous Empathy

Chapter 13: Bridging the Distance

Chapter 14: Against All Odds

Epilogue: Still Attending

Notes

What People are Saying About This

Edmund D. Pellegrino

This book will inspire medical students, reaffirm the varieties of humane practicies for her colleagues, and reassure parents that humane care is still possible.

John Lantos

Margaret Mohrmann gives an eloquent account of her development as a physician and as a human being. Her self-examination is uncompromising, sometimes lacerating, and ultimately redemptive. Mohrmann dissects the differences between her training as a physician and her education as a healer. This book should be read by and meditated upon by anybody who is thinking about or training for a career in medicine.

Richard B. Miller

Attending Children charts a physician’s journey from the beginnings of medical competence to professional and moral wisdom. Exploring not only the experience of illness but also its meaning in the lives of children and their families, Margaret E. Mohrmann uncovers the inner resources needed for conscientious and effective doctoring. Her narratives of suffering and healing, love and loss should be required reading for everyone who works closely with children and adolescents in medical settings. At once moving and compassionate, this book traces the many ways in which illness assaults the young—and challenges the talents of those who care for them.

Arthur W. Frank

Margaret Mohrmann allows us to see what we hardly dare to imagine: medical practice full of generosity, emptied of ego. No medical writing shows more clearly the profound effects of physicians on their patients' spirit. In the humility and care of these stories, we walk on holy ground.

Amy Laura Hall

Mohrmann has cultivated what Simone Weil called 'attentiveness.' Masterfully relating stories both early and late in her pediatric work, she brings the reader to note the contours of lives lived, not merely the manifesting symptoms of a condition. To explain the abstract principle of autonomy to an aspiring practitioner is one thing. To show her what it means charitably and mercifully to attend to patients is another. As a scholar, I will assign this book. As a mother, I hope that those who treat my daughters will read it.

Editorial Reviews

3 Stars from Doody

Reviewer: Douglas Moodie, MD (Ochsner Clinic Foundation)
Description: This is a narrative by Dr. Margaret Mohrmann, a pediatrician for 30 years, describing her involvement with children who are seriously ill and their families. Dr. Mohrmann is exceptionally qualified to write this book because she is also Professor of Religious Studies and Medical Education at the University of Virginia. This is a unique experience over an entire physician's lifetime of attending, listening, accompanying, and waiting as she deals with all the issues surrounding children who are ill and their families under great stress and emotional upheaval.
Purpose: The purpose is to portray one physician's journey through 30 years of caring for sick children and dealing with those children and their families. These are certainly worthy objectives and the book provides a personalized look at physiologic and human issues in pediatric care. The book certainly meets the author's goals of accomplishing a narrative of caring and concern for children and their families.
Audience: The audience is pediatric health professionals, medical students, and anyone in medicine and nursing who interacts with very sick children.
Features: The book has a large number of clinical vignettes, described by the titles of the chapters, relating to patient issues such as waiting, listening, letting go, power and powerlessness. These major themes are illustrated by individual personal patient encounters.
Assessment: This is a unique book, and a very personalized one, about dealing with children and families and is wonderful in its compassion. It is full of human insights.

Doody's Review Service

Many pages of this book deserve to be dog-eared by anyone who cares for children in the medical field, particularly medical educators who hope that their lessons live beyond the classroom and medical students who want to know what makes a good physician.

Literature and Medicine

A refreshingly frank first-hand account of [Mohrmann's] journey from nervous medical intern to director of a pediatric intensivecare unit.

The Lancet

Attending Children is an extraordinary book. Mohrmann has a clear gift for language, and she enables the reader to care about the children and families she portrays so eloquently.

New England Journal of Medicine

Deserves a special place in the library of each and every medical professional who cares for children of all ages.

JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)

Attending Children is an extraordinary book. Mohrmann has a clear gift for language, and she enables the reader to care about the children and families she portrays so eloquently.

A refreshingly frank first-hand account of [Mohrmann's] journey from nervous medical intern to director of a pediatric intensivecare unit.

Deserves a special place in the library of each and every medical professional who cares for children of all ages.

Many pages of this book deserve to be dog-eared by anyone who cares for children in the medical field, particularly medical educators who hope that their lessons live beyond the classroom and medical students who want to know what makes a good physician.

From the Publisher