HEALING CHILDREN A Surgeons Stories From the Frontiers of Pediatric Medicine By Kurt Newman 262 pp. Viking, $27. <\/p>\n
Newman, a pediatric surgeon, argues that seriously ill and injured children are better served at pediatric hospitals than at adult hospitals a claim generally supported by the data showing that kids with bone fractures, brain injury and severe sepsis do best when pediatric specialists manage their care. But he makes his case through stories of ill children who were languishing in the care of adult or community providers only to be rescued (often by Newman himself). <\/p>\n
In one instance, a friend called Newman from the neonatal I.C.U. of a community hospital, where his newborn son was vomiting bile. Newman recognized the danger and arranged an ambulance to bring the boy to Childrens National, where the boy was saved but faced a prolonged hospital stay. <\/p>\n
Newman captures the beautiful collegiality of pediatric medicine and the wisdom of parents and of children themselves, as in this description of a young patient with intestinal failure: He thought more about his parents suffering than his own. As a human being, he put me to shame. Newman also lionizes big donors, and I could not help reading the book as in part a veiled plea for more donations to Childrens National. If this is the books goal, I hope it succeeds. The kids Newman describes are themselves heroic, and they deserve nothing but the best. <\/p>\n
OPEN HEART A Cardiac Surgeons Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table By Stephen Westaby 287 pp. Basic Books, $27. <\/p>\n
Westabys book will be a balm to the hearts of curmudgeons everywhere. Sidestepping the contemporary hand-wringing about the lack of empathy in medicine, Westaby, a British surgeon, positions empathy as a threat to the surgical career: Heart surgery, he writes, needs to be an impersonal, technical exercise. Westaby learned this lesson young, when desperately trying and failing to save the life of a child. <\/p>\n
Refreshingly, Westaby does not put a positive spin on suffering or cleave to false optimism. The Grim Reaper perches on every surgeons shoulder. Death is always definitive. No second chances. The deaths that truly madden him are those that could have been prevented by available technologies not then funded by the British National Health Service (N.H.S.), his employer. Westaby himself is a pioneer in the development and use of implantable ventricular assist devices little machines that pump blood for a failing heart. When charity funding for these new devices runs out, Westaby finds himself in the unenviable position of having to sit back and watch patients die people I once could have saved. <\/p>\n
As a young doctor who imagines nationalized medicine as a way toward comprehensive care for all my patients, I was taken aback. I too have watched patients uninsured Americans die of treatable disease. The book is a reminder that nationalized medicine might ease the racial and economic injustices that currently determine which people die too soon, but it wouldnt spell the end of medically preventable deaths. <\/p>\n
SOMETIMES AMAZING THINGS HAPPEN Heartbreak and Hope on the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Ward By Elizabeth Ford 247 pp. Regan Arts, $27.95. <\/p>\n
Ford is a psychiatrist who cares for mentally ill prisoners. Her book testifies to the kind of love that physicians can offer: a dogged, practical devotion that leaves us missing birthdays, going sleepless and in Fords case driving across a closed bridge toward Manhattan to secure safe care for prisoners who have been stranded by Hurricane Sandy. She coolly describes acts of care like walking into a room to comfort agitated, psychotic men twice her size. <\/p>\n
Happily, Ford is human here, and thus imperfect. She describes burning out, her failings as a parent and her inability to care for patients who have seriously harmed children after she herself becomes a mother. Motherhood also imbues her with a new authority in her care, and she discovers that the body of a pregnant physician incites moments of human connection with patients. <\/p>\n
Fords bravery emerges not only in acts of clinical devotion but also in some light critique of the tense relationship between medicine and law enforcement. She describes how some correctional officers embedded in her psychiatric unit antagonize patients and occasionally thwart care. She also describes being devastated upon learning exactly how a patient was severely beaten during a takedown in the unit. This is not an expos, however and Ford is still an employee of Correctional Health Services so she does not reveal whether the man was injured by a correctional officer or by psychiatric staff. The story is graphic and real but, as in most physician memoirs, details are withheld. <\/p>\n
Rachel Pearson is a resident pediatrician and the author of No Apparent Distress: A Doctors Coming-of-Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine. <\/p>\n
A version of this article appears in print on July 2, 2017, on Page BR26 of the Sunday Book Review. <\/p>\n
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Four Timely Memoirs from the Halls of Medicine - New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HEALING CHILDREN A Surgeons Stories From the Frontiers of Pediatric Medicine By Kurt Newman 262 pp. Viking, $27. Continue reading