Equal Partners: A Physician's Call for a New Spirit of Medicine / Edition 1

by Jody Heymann, M.D.

Overview

One week after graduating with honors from Harvard Medical School, Jody Heymann woke up in an emergency room with no memory of how she got there, and, within hours, was turned from physician into patient. The hospitalization and brain surgery that followed taught her more about the practice of medicine in America than all her years of schooling. Her deeply disturbing conclusion: patients all too often occupy the bottom rung of the ladder, with their legs tied to prevent them from climbing. Heymann's experiences as a patient convinced her to work toward a new, more compassionate spirit of medicine—one in which physicians and patients are equal partners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812217339
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	05/22/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Jody Heymann is Director of Policy at the Harvard UniversityCenter for Society and Health, Associate Professor of Health and Social Behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Assistant Professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Editorial Reviews

"I do not say this lightly. This book should be read by everyone in medicine: students, residents, physicians, and insurers."

Harvard Medical School Daniel D. Federman

"Equal Partners is a narrative of remarkable vividness, sobriety, clarity, and balance. Jody Heymann has plumbed patienthood to its depths, and has reentered medicine as a deep listener to patients and their needs, and as an advocate for a medicine which does not infantilize but recognizes individuality and autonomy, and makes patients equal partners with their physicians."

Oliver Sacks

"Jody Heymann affirms the power of stories, when written as beautifully as these, to instruct and to move. At the same time, Equal Partners speaks directly and clearly to a debate previously conducted in a jargon that is blessedly absent from this fine book."

Ethan Canin

"A narrative of remarkable vividness, sobriety, clarity, and balance."—Oliver Sacks

"I do not say this lightly. This book should be read by everyone in medicine: students, residents, physicians, and insurers."—Daniel D. Federman, Harvard Medical School

"Jody Heymann affirms the power of stories, when written as beautifully as these, to instruct and to move. At the same time, Equal Partners speaks directly and clearly to a debate previously conducted in a jargon that is blessedly absent from this fine book."—Ethan Canin

"Equal Partners is a narrative of remarkable vividness, sobriety, clarity, and balance. Jody Heymann has plumbed patienthood to its depths, and has reentered medicine as a deep listener to patients and their needs, and as an advocate for a medicine which does not infantilize but recognizes individuality and autonomy, and makes patients equal partners with their physicians."—Oliver Sacks

From the Publisher

What happens when a doctor is admitted to the hospital with a serious condition? For Heymann, an intern and a graduate of both the Harvard Medical School and the Kennedy School of Government, it was a harrowing yet vastly enlightening experience. Heymann was placed in neurological intensive care after a seizure; thus began her year and a half as both doctor and patient, as well as parent, chronicled in this spirited account. It is a critique of present doctor-patient relationships and a call for changes in medical education to sensitize future physicians to their patients' concerns as well as to their ailments. As a patient excluded from medical decisions affecting her own case, even misdiagnosed and callously treated, Heymann speaks candidly of her vulnerability. As a physician, she urges fundamental changes in medical practice so that ``doctors would be trained and allowed time to share understanding and decision making with patients.'' (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

After graduating from medical school, Heymann was struck with a seizure and a brain tumor. This calamity is the basis for a harrowing but ultimately riveting medical tale in which Heymann was both a patient and a doctor. A Harvard faculty member, MacArthur Fellow, wife, and mother of two children, Heymann recounts how she juggled some of these projects simultaneously while struggling with severe neurological problems and completing her pediatric medical residency. From her patient's perspective, Heymann learned firsthand of shortcomings in the medical establishment. Consequently, she argues strongly for the introduction into medical practice of a new spirit in which patients and their families are truly included as equal partners in their own healthcare. She also discusses her recent work with Guatemalan refugees, which demonstrates her social conscience but clouds the main theme of her work. Heymann is best when describing her role as patient and the medical outcomes of her case. For both general and informed readers.-James Swanton, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine, New York

Library Journal