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What Cannot Be Undone: True Stories of a Life in Medicine by Walter M. Robinson

March 25, 2022 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

What Cannot Be Undone: True Stories of a Life in Medicine by Walter M. Robinson was published early this year by the University of New Mexico Press.

Our training as physicians teaches us to bury our emotions, to remain objective and detached, and it has become clear that patients can perceive doctors as lacking empathy by hiding this aspect of themselves. The complexities of this dynamic are explored in Walter M. Robinson’s What Cannot Be Undone: True Stories of a Life in Medicine, a collection of essays examining the self-destructive results of detachment from the physician’s emotional responses, published recently by the University of New Mexico Press. When physicians cannot tolerate the pain and suffering of their inner life, compassion-fatigue, burnout, substance abuse and suicide are possibilities.

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In Caregiving, Creative non-fiction, Essays, Health, Hospitals, Narrative Medicine, Memoir Tags doctor burnout, patients and doctors, doctor stories, narrative medicine, illness

Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life by Suzanne Koven

December 22, 2021 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life by Suzanne Koven, MD is both instructive and empowering for a professional audience. The “young female physician” is Koven herself 30 years ago, and the memoir’s title comes from a New England Journal of Medicine op-ed she wrote that brought to light Imposter Syndrome (a perceived and misplaced self-doubt that high-achievers are unworthy of the confidence others place in them and that soon enough they will be found-out as imposters). A primary care physician, Koven creates a narrative that addresses issues facing women in medicine such as pay iniquity, harassment and sexism. While all of the above is plenty to keep readers in the clinical world engaged, the book’s success resides in something else—the way Koven approaches universal truths by examining and honoring the specific experience of her life as a woman and as a doctor. Going beyond the halls of the hospital and the titular “young female physician,” she creates a narrative sure to resonate with many.

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In Book Reviews, Co-Constructing Narrative, Caregiving, Creative non-fiction, Essays, Health, Memoir, Narrative Medicine Tags patients and doctors, doctor burnout, doctor stories, medical memoir, narrative medicine

At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life by Samuel Harrington MD

December 15, 2021 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life by Samuel Harrington, MD

At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life is a book that should be studied by students preparing themselves for careers in medicine, by those taking care of aging patients, by family members who don’t want their loved ones to suffer, and by everyone who desires for their life to end in peace with a good death.

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In Caregiving, Co-Constructing Narrative, Book Reviews, Death, Health, Hospitals, Narrative Medicine Tags good death, end-of-life care, living will

The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish

December 8, 2021 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish

Fiction has the ability to bring a world to life, to offer other viewpoints and ways of looking at the world, and it also has the ability to put us in another body in order to give us the experience of a disease or condition. In Atticus Lish’s excellent new novel The War for Gloria (Knopf, 2021), the disease is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The story is told from the perspectives of Gloria and her son Corey, who is a young teenager when Gloria is diagnosed with ALS. Lish, whose novel Preparation for the Next Life won the 2015 Pen/Faulkner Award, brings to life the world of working class Boston suburbs.

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In Health, Medical Research, Narrative Medicine, Caregiving Tags ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, narrative medicine, illness narratives, caregivers
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