News/Books

Please read the second paragraph, which sums up beautifully what is right with medicine.

When health care and reform comes up, the analogy to an elephant and the blind men often comes up. The blind men who touch an elephant in different places have totally different notions about what an elephant is.

The delivery of health care services is comparable to a herd of elephants, as many elected officials have learned. What can be done?

This elegantly written review sums up what may save us all as we struggle with our problems.

The New York Times

In reviewing a book, The Surgeons:Life and Death in a Top Heart Center, by Charles R. Morris, the writer ends with this compelling summary:

“What ultimately brings clarity to this book—-and hope for health care reform—-are the stories Morris delivers along the way. There is the beleagured nurse struggling in the middle of the night to help two surgical teams perform an organ procurement, the world- renowned cardiologist whose belief in transparency includes recounting harrowing clinical moments to some 500 colleagues, and the young surgeon, a decade after medical school, working day and night and for hours at a time standing hunched over an operating table ‘with no breaks for food, water or bathroom’ and a salary less than that of a ‘kid fresh out of law school.’ Medicine is full of such examples, Morris writes, people ‘working very hard under great pressure—because it was the right thing to do.

“For better or worse, the quality of health care us driven by what Morris calls an ‘artisanal’ value system, one that has little to do with institutional allegiances or administrativ management objectives, but rather with ‘internalized systems of ethics and expectations of other professionals.’ And that, at least for now, as Morris shows us, may be the part of the elephant that saves us all.” (Emphasis added)

Source: The New York Times Book Review, October 28, 2007