Book Reviews
Clinical Infectious Diseases is an international medical journal that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. We are very pleased that the editor of the journal chose to review Medicine and Compassion, and we re-print the review—with permission—below.
Like most doctors, I sometimes lack compassion. Once, as an intern, exhausted beyond caring, I discharged a favorite patient from the hospital despite his obvious downward spiral due to renal cell carcinoma. My so-called excuse? I needed to lower my inpatient census! Today, almost 30 years later, I am still pained when I remember the baleful looks that he and his wife cast my way when he was readmitted the following morning. They knew that I had abandoned him, and so did I.
At other times, I have been compassionate beyond the call of duty, returning to the bedside of a patient who had received an infectious diseases consultation but who could no longer be helped by heroic antibiotic therapy-or by any treatment, for that matter. That I can clearly recall such moments is telling, however. Buried and forgotten-figuratively and literally- are many more people whom I did not comfort during their final days and hours. Read More
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What is Medicine & Compassion?
Medicine and Compassion is the first book to both raise and answer the question of whether caregivers can train to expand their capacity for compassion....
