How Not to Be a Doctor: And Other Essays - Tapa dura

Humorous, poignant, provocative, and educational, the author's opinions and anecdotes offer fresh takes on the ever changing field of medicine and how small changes in patient care have the potential to inspire radical improvements in the industry at large.

This collection of essays gets to the heart and soul of current medical practice. It is written by a doctor, but incorporates life experience and wisdom, making it an easy, thought provoking read. A worthwhile resource for anyone currently in medical practice, or who contemplating a career as a doctor.--Jane Dacre, President of the Royal College of Physicians

I raced through this book, laughing, nodding, highlighting, and then read some favorite bits again. Every chapter has a gem of wisdom as well as being so very elegantly written and entertaining. I shall be recommending it to my fellow coaches as virtually all of it applies to us as much as to clinicians: do we understand the exquisite importance of choosing the right words for our questions? Do we always hear what matters most for this client right now? Do we always act on the principle that kindness is every bit as important as our technical know-how? Maybe not--and we need to be reminded.--Jenny Rogers, author of Coaching for Health

Dr. Launer reminds us that we as doctors need to share our vulnerabilities and be willing to explore new horizons, not just in science, but about the heart and soul of what it means to be human as we journey with our patients.--Katrina Anderson, Australian National University College of Health and Medicine

Thoughtful and illuminating.

What fun to read! Lively, entertaining, thoughtful. At times one simply laughs in agreement, at other times one wants to remonstrate in disbelief. But always with a smile, and sometimes without even intending to, a huge guffaw releases itself as if the air needed to understand how amusing a meta-comment on medicine could be. The chapters on hospitals inadequate signage and the bureaucratic argot of the healthcare system are memorable. Altogether delightful!--Arthur Kleinman, Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard University, author of The Illness Narratives

Dr. Launer expertly crafts little thought experiments, dialogues and scenes specifically to shift your perspective . . . What Dr. Launer does best in this collection is inject new life into age-old lessons.

How Not to Be a Doctor is seriously funny, wickedly irreverent collection of stories. It has wise advice to those that want to be better doctors, whether young or old. . . . Deep understanding shines through: if only every medical student could hear his advice: 'We succeed by letting go of the habit of trying to fix everything.'--Glyn Elwyn, Director of the Patient Engagement Program at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy, Dartmouth College, and author of Shared Decision Making in Health Care

Doctor and medical columnist John Launer has written on the practice and teaching of medicine for many years. Now, more than fifty of his essays have been collected in How Not to Be A Doctor. Taken together, they set out an argument that being a doctor—a real doctor—should mean being able to draw on every aspect of yourself, your interests, and your experiences, however remote these may seem from the medical task of the moment.Originating from popular columns Launer has written for medical journals, the essays range from the title essay “How Not to Be A Doctor,” an ironic piece illustrating how being authentic as a doctor may mean behaving in ways you were never taught in medical school, to a story of the imagined conversation between two prehistoric medical men on the primitive diet, to the author’s poignant account of being a patient himself as he received treatment for a life-threatening illness. Some of the essays take the form of short stories, either imaginary or autobiographical, and some are contemplative in tone, while others are polemical, humorous, educational, fantastical, satirical, or dead serious. They cover a range of topics including music, poetry, literature, and psychoanalysis, as well as contemporary medical politics and the personal experiences of being a doctor. From the absurd to the profound, the short stories, essays, and reflections in How Not to Be a Doctor combine erudition with humor, candor, and the human touch to show how, in medicine, you cannot separate personal experiences from professional ones, and to inform and entertain readers on both sides of the stethoscope.