Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

The Doctor Will See You Now

"Please have your photo ID, co-payment, and insurance card ready."
"Take a seat in the waiting area and they'll call you when the Doctor is ready."
"Hello, Doctor."
"Goodbye, Doctor."

A visit to the doctor can sometimes feel like a trip to the drive-through window. Estimates for the average length of an office visit range from 20 minutes to as little as seven minutes. A movement in primary care aims to change that. Longer visits, monthly fees rather than insurance reimbursements, and fewer visits to costly specialists are some of the features that come from creating patient-centered practices. Advances in technology have allowed some doctors to get off the treadmill of seeing 25 patients a day and reduce their pace to seeing 10 to 12 patients a day.

If you're curious about the snap decisions doctors make in those brief visits Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think is a must-read. Through compelling case studies and interviews with fellow physicians, Groopman describes how the training and clinical experiences that doctors have had can influence their diagnoses and lead to errors. Delving into the realms of cognition and perception, the book reports on such fascinating studies as one that tracked doctors' eye movements while reviewing chest x-rays. He uses his own experiences seeking treatment for hand and wrist problems to compare and contrast the styles of two physicians. He also includes an epilogue that walks step-by-step through an office visit with the questions you as a patient should be asking.

Just the title of this book lets you know you're in for quite a ride: Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids. Whew! Julie Salamon spent a year at Brooklyn's Maimonides Medical Center, a microcosm of the multicultural community that surrounds it and fertile ground for portraying the vibrant daily life within its walls. Salamon has a direct reportage style that will make you feel like you are following along with her as she sits in on consultations, follows patients through the labyrinth of hospital treatment, and listens in on feuding doctors. Giving just enough background information to keep her narrative flowing, Salamon's book is a rich and nuanced look at medicine as practiced in a modern hospital.

Have you ever had surgery? You should call your surgeon and thank him or her for going to medical school. Through the Middle Ages, your surgeon might also have been a barber, and prior to the 1840's your surgery would have been performed without anesthesia. Esteemed historian Roy Porter uses his deep knowledge of history to tell the story of how medicine was practiced before--before anesthesia, before antibiotics, and even before botox. Blood and Guts: a Short History of Medicine does include a short chapter on modern medicine, but the focus is on the past. This title includes a great section of further reading for each chapter.

For more great reads on medicine, check out the excellent booklist Medical Nonfiction that Reads Like Fiction.