How Not to be A Doctor: And Other Essays

by John Launer

Overview

"Humorous, poignant, provocative and educational," this essay collection by a doctor "offer[s] fresh takes on the ever-changing field of medicine." (Kirkus Reviews)
 
Doctor and medical columnist John Launer has written on the practice and teaching of medicine for many years. How Not to be a Doctor includes over fifty of his essays covering a range of topics including music, poetry, literature, and psychoanalysis, as well as contemporary medical politics and the personal experiences of being a doctor.
 
Taken together, they set out an argument that being a doctor—a real doctor—should mean being able to draw on every aspect of yourself, your interests, and your experiences, however remote these may seem from the medical task of the moment.
 
From lessons on what they don't teach you in medical school to the author's poignant account of being a patient himself as he received treatment for a life-threatening illness, the essays in How Not to Be a Doctor combine erudition with humor, candor, and the human touch that will inform and entertain readers on both ends of the stethoscope.
 
"Witty and wise. Shows how important it is that doctors are allowed to be human." —Kit Wharton, author of Emergency Admissions: Memoirs of an Ambulance Driver

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468316322
Publisher:	ABRAMS Press
Publication date:	08/16/2022
Sold by:	OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	210
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

John Launer is a GP and medical educator known for his work in consultation skills, clinical supervision, and narrative based medicine. He is one of the best-known columnists in the British medical press and has contributed columns and articles to numerous periodicals and journals, including Times Health Supplement and BMJ, for over twenty years.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 How not to be a Doctor 1

2 Stress Test 5

3 Plus Ça Change 9

4 Modern medicine 12

5 What's in a name? 16

6 The Wrong Trousers 19

7 Close Encounters 22

8 Mentioned in Passing 26

9 All Greek to me 30

10 Anna O and the 'Talking Cure' 34

11 Doing the Rounds 39

12 It's all in the body 43

13 Dr Scrooge's casebook 47

14 The Itch 51

15 Of Cheese and Choice 55

16 Let's talk About Sex 59

17 Mysteries of the Male 63

18 The enduring asylum 68

19 Do not Disturb 72

20 Burning your Relatives 76

21 The problem with sex 80

22 The Art of Questioning 85

23 Hot water 88

24 Interpreting Illness 91

25 It takes two 95

26 Yellow nose sign 98

27 Dialogue and diagnosis 102

28 Breaking the news 106

29 Careers advice 110

30 Only obeying orders 114

31 The art of not listening 118

32 End of the road 122

33 Escaping the loop 125

34 Impaled on the invisible 129

35 Weasel words 132

36 Folk illness and medical models 135

37 The facts of death 139

38 Care pathways 144

39 On kindness 148

40 Capable but insane 153

41 On the record 157

42 Close readings 161

43 Meet your microbiome 166

44 Opium 171

45 Medicine as poetry 177

46 The breathtakingly simple facts of life 181

47 Monkey business 185

48 Medicine under capitalism 190

49 Memories of the workhouse 194

50 Taking risks seriously 199

51 Three kinds of reflection 203

52 Brief encounter 208

53 Power and powerlessness 212

54 Fathers and sons 216

Further Reading 221

Acknowledgements 233

Author's note 235

Editorial Reviews

Dr.
Launer reminds us that we as doctors need to share our vulnerabilities and be willing to explore new horizons, not just in science, but about the heart and soul of what it means to be human as we journey with our patients.

Katrina Anderson

This collection of essays gets to the heart and soul of current medical practice. It is written by a doctor, but incorporates life experience and wisdom, making it an easy, thought provoking read. A worthwhile resource for anyone currently in medical practice, or who contemplating a career as a doctor.

Jane Dacre

How Not to Be a Doctor is seriously funny, wickedly irreverent collection of stories. It has wise advice to those that want to be better doctors, whether young or old. . . . Deep understanding shines through: if only every medical student could hear his advice: ‘We succeed by letting go of the habit of trying to fix everything.’”

Glyn Elwyn

I
raced through this book, laughing, nodding, highlighting, and then read some favorite bits again. Every chapter has a gem of wisdom as well as being so very elegantly written and entertaining. I
shall be recommending it to my fellow coaches as virtually all of it applies to us as much as to clinicians: do we understand the exquisite importance of choosing the right words for our questions? Do we always hear what matters most for this client right now? Do we always act on the principle that kindness is every bit as important as our technical know-how? Maybe not—and we need to be reminded.

Jenny Rogers

Dr. Launer expertly crafts little thought experiments, dialogues and scenes specifically to shift your perspective . . . What Dr. Launer does best in this collection is inject new life into age-old lessons.

The Medical Post

What fun to read! Lively, entertaining, thoughtful. At times one simply laughs in agreement, at other times one wants to remonstrate in disbelief. But always with a smile, and sometimes without even intending to, a huge guffaw releases itself as if the air needed to understand how amusing a meta-comment on medicine could be. The chapters on hospitals inadequate signage and the bureaucratic argot of the healthcare system are memorable. Altogether delightful!

Arthur Kleinman

Thoughtful and illuminating.

The Toronto Star

2018-03-03
An assortment of clinical musings from the forefront of patient-centered medicine.Physician and medical educator Launer (Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein, 2015) collects material from his columns that have appeared in two medical journals. Focused on the science of medicine and the delivery of patient care, the essays also share intimately personal insights about the author's life as a husband and father and his lifelong passions. Launer draws largely on the stories of his patients and how their suffering and discomfort requires that a compassionate physician act "as a whole person." The author directly addresses industry indifference and the lost art of listening and how exhibiting true interest in a patient's pain can make a difference. In several pieces, Launer confesses to experiencing this lack of empathy himself as a patient—e.g., the time he, during a routine cardiac stress test, endured "a needless act of emotional abuse where kindness would have required little effort." The author's infuriating lifelong battle with eczema reveals a doctor at his most human and also offers some sound thought processes for readers coping with chronic conditions. Other pieces briefly discuss choices in health care, sexuality, and the dilemma of "career patients," and Launer also includes a time-demarcated essay on the contents of his workday, revealing the frantic, contract-centered corporate side of medicine. Most pieces are brief—some just a few pages in length—but each represents a facet of the medical world that the author has either learned from or experienced firsthand. As a professional open to change and perspective, Launer is able to channel these lessons back into his practice, hoping the result will prove compassionate and proactive for his patients and his practice.Humorous, poignant, provocative, and educational, the author's opinions and anecdotes offer fresh takes on the ever changing field of medicine and how small changes in patient care have the potential to inspire radical improvements in the industry at large.

Kirkus Reviews