LitMed: Literature Arts Medicine Database

American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics

Hazzard, Kevin

Last Updated: Aug-02-2023

Schilling, Carol

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Summary:

Before the late 1960s, when someone had a medical emergency, their best hope was a “swoop and scoop” rescue. A police van or a hearse—if one appeared at all—would load up and drive the patient, unattended, unrestrained, to a hospital emergency department. On arrival, there was often little that could be done. In American Sirens, journalist Kevin Hazzard, himself a paramedic, reveals the story of the first fully trained paramedics who practiced life-saving medicine beyond hospital walls. Celebrated in Hazzard’s account are the Black men from the segregated Hill District of Pittsburgh that the visionary physician Peter Safar, inventor of CPR, recruited and trained.

Safar’s 1967 project to train and hire unemployed men from a community organization known as Freedom House was initially met with derision. How, his colleagues asked, could he trust people with a high school education, or less, to endure intensive medical training and perform it flawlessly? The training included fifty instruction hours in anatomy and physiology, more time learning CPR, advanced first aid, defensive driving, and medical ethics. Trainees also learned how to treat cardiac conditions, diabetic emergencies, bleeds, spinal and pelvic fractures, and overdoses. Most controversially, they were taught how to intubate patients. While only 24 participants in Safar’s first class of 44 succeeded, those who did provided evidence that paramedics were fully capable of saving lives. According to Hazzard, Safar’s emergency response project became the national standard.

Hazzard folds the project’s success into the stories of the men—all men at first—who took pride in contributing their life-saving skills to their community. Many of their lives changed direction in the process. Primary among them was John Moon, whose biography and dedication engagingly move the narrative forward. However, Hazzard also recounts how the project’s success met opposition from White residents wary of Black paramedics, a city government reluctant to fund them, and medically untrained police who felt upstaged. The final chapters recount the unravelling of the Freedom House first responders by the mayor of Pittsburgh. By 1975, political forces defunded the Freedom House crews and created a city-sponsored EMS run by the police. Only a few of the Freedom House paramedics chose to join or remain on the city ambulances. Most notably was John Moon, who rose in the ranks, recruited paramedics from low-income neighborhoods, and continues to keep the legacy of Freedom House alive.

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Freud on My Couch

Berlin, Richard

Last Updated: Aug-11-2021

Davis, Cortney

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Collection (Poems)

Secret Wounds

Berlin, Richard

Last Updated: Aug-06-2021

Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Collection (Poems)

Summary:

In Secret Wounds, his second full length collection of poetry, psychiatrist Richard Berlin continues his exploration of the inner world of medicine with a sequence of 73 poems that flow seamlessly, uninterrupted by grouping into topics or sections. In the first poem, “Lay Down Sally,” the author attends a man dying on dialysis, and concludes with “A nurse hangs the morphine. / I write my blue notes.” In the last, “The Last Concert of Summer,” he reflects on his long experience with the sick and suffering, ending the poem with, “I place a stethoscope in my ears and listen / to the heart when I’ve run out of things to say.” In between, the poems reflect varied incidents, topics, conflicts, and wounds, as they occur from medical education (“Teaching Rounds,” “Touch,” “On Call, 3 AM”) through a life in medical practice (“Rage,” “The Scientists,” “How a Psychiatrist Parties”) to something like enlightenment (“Note to Pablo Neruda,” “A Psychiatrist’s Guitar,” “End of Summer”).

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Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life

Koven, Suzanne

Last Updated: Feb-26-2021

Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Collection (Essays)

Summary:

In this collection of autobiographical essays, Koven contemplates some unique challenges confronting female physicians: discrimination, sexism, lower annual salary on average than male counterparts, possible pregnancy and motherhood. She recalls her medical school and residency experience, describes her internal medicine practice, and highlights her role as a daughter, spouse, and mother.

Worry is a theme that works its way into many phases of Koven's life and chapters of this book. The opening one, "Letter to a Young Female Physician," introduces self-doubt and concerns of inadequacy regarding her clinical competence. "Imposter syndrome" is the term she assigns to this fear of fraudulence (that she is pretending to be a genuine, qualified doctor). She worries about her elderly parents, her children, patients, and herself. Over time, she learns to cope with the insecurity that plagues both her professional and personal life.

Some of these essays are especially emotional. "We Have a Body" dwells on the difficult subject of dying, spotlighting a 27-year-old woman who is 27 weeks pregnant and diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the lung. "Mom at Bedside, Appears Calm" chronicles the author's terror when her young son experiences grand mal seizures and undergoes multiple brain surgeries for the tumor causing them.

Listening emerges as the most important part of a doctor's job. Koven encourages all doctors to utilize their "own personal armamentarium" which might include gentleness, exemplary communication skills, a light sense of humor, or unwavering patience. She fully endorses a concept articulated by another physician-writer, Gavin Francis: "Medicine is an alliance of science and kindness" (p228).

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The Doctors Blackwell: How two pioneering sisters brought medicine to women--and women to medicine

Nimura, Janice

Last Updated: Feb-19-2021

Martel, Rachel

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Biography

Summary:

The Doctors Blackwell begins with an account of an auspicious new beginning—the opening of The New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first women’s hospital staffed by female physicians. Founded in 1857 in New York City by Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell with the express purpose of providing clinical experience to female physicians, the hospital was a landmark achievement in the long struggle for parity in medical training. The Doctors Blackwell goes on to trace the history of the institution and of its two founders, themselves trailblazing members of the medical profession as the first and third women to earn medical degrees in the United States.

Two of nine children born to abolitionist, Protestant dissenters in Bristol England, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell were the recipients of a strict moral upbringing. While successful in instilling the values of education and hard work, their childhood also left them socially awkward and with the sense that they were both morally and intellectually superior to those outside of their family. When the Blackwells emigrated to New York City in 1832 and then on to Cincinnati in 1838, their social circles were confined to religious and abolitionist advocacy. Yet soon after the family arrived in Cincinnati their lives were upended by the passing of their father, Samuel Blackwell. With their mother and six siblings to support, the three eldest Blackwell daughters-- Anna, Marian, and Elizabeth-- took up teaching until their younger brothers were old enough to support the family.

Elizabeth, morally principled to a fault, studious, and determined to succeed intellectually, found teaching to be an unfulfilling means of channeling her energies. Having forsworn marriage at the age of 17, she longed for something challenging and admirable upon which to focus her formidable intelligence. When a dying friend suggested that she become a physician, because she herself would have appreciated a female doctor tending to her disease, Elizabeth’s interest was piqued. Yet her attraction to medicine was rooted not in a desire to help the ailing (indeed she viewed illness as a form of weakness), but in an ideological quest to prove that women were capable of achieving the same distinctions as any man. She saw herself as a moral crusader with the goal of uplifting all of womankind.

Beginning in 1844, Elizabeth leveraged her teaching connections to gain the backing of several prominent male physicians. Yet the all-male world of medicine remained stubbornly closed to her, and it wasn’t until 1847 that she was admitted to the Geneva Medical College in upstate New York, an event that caused a stir in the medical community and beyond. Isolated both from her male classmates and from laypeople, who viewed her at best as an oddity and at worst as a dangerous anomaly, Elizabeth nonetheless became a figure equally admired and reviled by the public. Her reputation as the first “lady doctor” preceded her, even as she gained the respect and admiration of the faculty at Geneva College and distinguished herself with additional training in Europe.

Meanwhile, the trials of Emily Blackwell, whom Elizabeth encouraged to follow in her footsteps, illustrated that far from breaking down the doors that barred women from medicine, Elizabeth’s admittance may only have served to seal them more tightly. Elizabeth was viewed as a notable exception to the general rule that women were unfit to practice medicine, and her male colleagues were uneasy at the thought of being replaced. But after a prolonged struggle, Emily succeeded in obtaining her medical degree from Cleveland Medical College and joined Elizabeth to hang up her shingle in New York City.

Increasingly frustrated by the difficulty in recruiting private patients to be seen by female physicians and by the dearth of clinical opportunities for the growing number of women in the field, Elizabeth and Emily opened their own hospital and medical school with the help of female philanthropists. Elizabeth’s philosophical zeal combined with Emily’s true love and aptitude for medicine proved to be a dynamic combination. Their contributions to the field not only changed the way that medicine is practiced, but also paved the way for generations of female physicians. Today, just over fifty percent of the nation’s medical students can trace their acceptance into the profession to the dogged determination of these two extraordinary women.

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Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients

Pearl, Robert

Last Updated: Feb-07-2021

Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

Pearl, a plastic surgeon and former CEO of a large medical group, writes powerfully and poignantly about the major role of physician culture - the customs and rituals, traits and beliefs of doctors. This culture is entrenched through years of medical training. He decides that physician culture "can be both a virtuous force and an equally destructive influence" (p70).

Some of that culture is readily on display: attire, tools of the trade, unique medical terminology, insensitive humor, frequent handwashing. Positive aspects of physician culture include self-confidence, integrity, compassion, and selflessness. Negative elements are ingrained to keep emotions and dread at bay: detachment, callousness, denial. This culture of medicine must navigate dual interests - healing (the mission of medicine) and profit (income, status, prestige).

Pearl suggests an evolutionary pathway for physician culture that he dubs "the five C's of Cultural Change" - confront, commit, connect, collaborate, contribute. He tackles issues of sexism, racism, and elitism in American healthcare. He explores the suffering of physicians and their need to seek forgiveness - often secretly and even in cases of perceived "failure" when everything possible was done correctly. His discussion is filled with agonizing, frustrating, and loving stories about patients, family members, and colleagues (including physician suicide).

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Man's 4th Best Hospital

Shem, Samuel

Last Updated: Feb-28-2020

Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Most of the group are reunited in this sequel to the 1978 blockbuster, The House of God: narrator Dr. Roy Basch and his girlfriend (now wife) Berry, former fellow interns (Eat My Dust Eddie, Hyper Hooper, the Runt, Chuck), surgeon Gath, the two articulate police officers (Gilheeny and Quick), and the Fat Man (a brilliant, larger-than-life former teaching resident). As interns, Basch and his comrades were a crazy, exhausted, cynical crew just trying to survive their brutal internship. Years later, the midlife doctors have changed but remain emotionally scarred.

The Fat Man (“Fats”), now a wealthy California internist who is beginning a biotech company targeting memory restoration, is recruited to reestablish the fortunes – financial and prestige – of Man’s Best Hospital which has slipped to 4th place in the annual hospital rankings. He calls on his former protégés to assist him in an honorable mission, “To put the human back in health care” (p34). Fats enlists other physicians (Drs. Naidoo and Humbo) along with a promising medical student (Mo Ahern) to staff his new Future of Medicine Clinic (FMC), an oasis of empathic medical care that strives to be with the patient.

Every great story needs a villain. Here the main bad guys are hospital president Jared Krashinsky, evil senior resident Jack Rowk Junior, and CEO of the BUDDIES hospital conglomerate Pat Flambeau. The electronic medical records system dubbed HEAL is a major antagonist, and the FMC docs wage war against it and the “screens.”

Poor Roy Basch works long hours, deals with family problems, has trouble paying bills, and experiences health issues (a bout of atrial fibrillation, a grand mal seizure, and alcohol use). Fats has warned of a “tipping point when medical care could go one way or another, either toward humane care or toward money and screens” (p8). Alas, the computers and cash appear victorious. A major character is killed. Many of the doctors working in the FMC including Basch leave the clinic. And fittingly, Man’s Best Hospital plummets in the latest rankings from 4th to 19th place.

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Breaking & Mending: A Junior Doctor's Stories of Compassion and Burnout

Cannon, Joanna

Last Updated: Oct-21-2019

Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir

Summary:

A British physician-writer reflects on her topsy-turvy medical training emphasizing the mental and emotional burden of becoming a doctor. In 22 brief chapters with titles including "The Darkest Hour," "Buried," and "The Wrong Kind of Kindness," a struggle between hope and despair furiously plays out - in patients, hospital staff, and the narrator.

Dr. Jo (as one patient calls her) remembers interviewing for medical school admission, the difficulty dissecting a cadaver, starting lots of IV's, dutifully toting an almost always buzzing pager, and breaking bad news. She shares with readers her own serious car accident with resulting facial injuries. She comments on the underfunded UK National Health Service (NHS) that is "held together by the goodwill of those who work within it, but even then it will fracture" (p104).

Anecdotes of memorable encounters are scattered throughout the narrative: a fortyish woman in the emergency department who describes a fast pulse and sense of impending doom diagnosed as having an anxiety attack who ten minutes later suffers a cardiac arrest, a man with severe schizophrenia, a suicide, an elderly blind person, a young woman with metastatic breast cancer.

But the lessons that have stuck with her are primarily dark and somber ones. "Sacrifice and the surrender of the self are woven into the job" (p77). She realizes that "perhaps not all good doctors are good people" (p125) and that as wonderful and essential as the virtue of compassion is, "compassion will eat away at your sanity" (p16). She chooses psychiatry as a specialty where kindness, empathy, creating trust with patients, and careful listening work wonders for people. "I learned that saving a life often has nothing to do with a scalpel or a defibrillator" (pp13-14).

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Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life.

Aronson, Louise

Last Updated: Oct-07-2019

Carter, III, Albert Howard

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction — Secondary Category: Literature /

Genre: Treatise

Summary:

Louise Aronson, a geriatrician, argues that we should create Elderhood as the third era of human aging, joining the earlier Childhood and Adulthood. This new concept will allow us to re-evaluate the richness of this later time, its challenges as body systems decline, and, of course, the choices of managing death. This important and valuable book is a polemic against modern medicine’s limits, its reductive focus, and structural violence against both patients and physicians. She argues for a wider vision of care that emphasizes well-being and health maintenance for not only elders but for every stage of life.

Aronson argues that contemporary society favors youth and values of action, speed, and ambition, while it ignores—even dislikes—aging, older people, and the elderly. She says ageism is more powerful than sexism or racism—as bad as those are. Medical schools ignore the elderly, focusing on younger patients, especially men, and medical students perceive geriatrics as boring, sad, and poorly paid. Primary care, in general, seems routine and dull. By contrast, medical treatments, especially high-tech, are exciting and lucrative. In medical schools a “hidden curriculum” focuses on pathophysiology, organ systems, and drugs, ignoring patients’ variability as well as their suffering and pathos. Further, business and industrial models make “healthcare” a commodity, and nowadays “doctors treat computers, not people” (p. 237). Aging has become “medicalized” as a disease. Medicine fights death as an enemy, often with futile treatment that may extend a dying process.

Instead, Aronson says we need to bring back the human element, putting care of people at the center, not science. She calls for a new paradigm with ten assumptions (p. 378). Number 2 reads: “Health matters more to both individuals and society than medicine.” Number 9 claims, “As an institution, medicine should prioritize the interests of the people over its own.”

Many practical changes would follow, from redesigned “child-proof” drug containers to buildings and public spaces that are more congenial to older people—and, in fact, to everyone else. We should change our attitudes about old age. For example, we might use the adjective “silver” for a medical facility that is friendly to and usable by older people. Changing our attitudes about aging can help all of us imagine more positive futures for each one of us and for all of our society.

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That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour

Puri, Sunita

Last Updated: Aug-13-2019

Shafer, Audrey

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir

Summary:

Sunita Puri, a palliative care attending physician, educates and illuminates the reader about how conversations about end of life goals can improve quality of life, not just quality of dying, in her memoir, That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour. Thirteen chapters are grouped in three parts: Between Two Dark Skies, The Unlearning and Infinity in a Seashell. The arc of the book follows Puri as she is raised by her anesthesiologist mother and engineer father – both immigrants from India – Puri’s decision to enter medical school, her choice of internal medicine residency followed by a palliative care fellowship in northern California and her return to practice in southern California where her parents and brother live. Besides learning about the process of becoming a palliative care physician, the reader also learns of Puri’s family’s deep ties to spirituality and faith, the importance of family and extended family, and her family’s cultural practices.

Puri writes extensively about patients and their families, as well as her mentors and colleagues. She plans and rehearses the difficult conversations she will have with patients in the same way a proceduralist plans and prepares for an intervention. She provides extensive quotes from conversations and analyzes where conversations go awry and how she decides whether to proceed down a planned path or improvise based on the language and body language of her patients and their family members. We visit patients in clinic, in hospital, and at home, and at all stages of Puri’s training and initial practice. Some of the most charged conversations are with colleagues, who, for example, ask for a palliative care consultation but want to limit that conversation to a single focus, such as pain management. We also learn of the differences between palliative care and hospice, and the particularly fraught associations many have with the latter term. She feels insulted when patients or families vent by calling her names such as “Grim Reaper” or “human killer” (p. 232), but understands that such words mean that more education is needed to help people understand what a palliative care physician can do.

As a mediator of extremely difficult conversations, where emotions such as shame, guilt, fear, helplessness and anger can swirl with love and gratitude, Puri finds the grace to acknowledge that all such emotions are part of the feelings of loss and impending grief, and to beautifully render her reflections on these intimacies: “Yet although I am seeing a patient because I have agreed that they are approaching death, if I do my job well, what I actually encounter is the full force of their lives.” (p. 206) Having met many dying people she notes: “Dying hasn’t bestowed upon them the meaning of life or turned them into embodiments of enlightenment; dying is simply a continuation of living this messy, temporary life, humanly and imperfectly.” (pp 221-2)

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