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The twelve essays collected in Silence Kills present a compelling, and
often frightening, look at the lack of communication and understanding
currently plaguing the American health care system.
These
stories explore a wide and complicated range of experiences—a doctor is
pressured into sending a patient home from the emergency room but later
must face his decision when the patient suddenly dies; a physician
deals with the doubt brought on by a malpractice lawsuit and must come
to terms with the fact that even doctors are fallible and human; a
woman fights for her mother’s mental health against a system eager to
over-medicate the elderly; and more—but all share one thing: a
frustration with a system that hinders communication and often leads to
unnecessary suffering.
Silence Kills is also available unabridged in MP3 CD format, and as Issue #33 of Creative Nonfiction--please note that the book contains special essays not found in the journal issue.
Table of Contents
From the Editor
Lee Gutkind
Foreword: Toward a More Caring, and Curing, Health System
Karen Wolk Feinstein
Introduction
Abraham Verghese
The Good Doctor
Helena Studer
Missing
Merilee D. Karr - read an excerpt
Mrs. Kelly
Paul Kelly
Non Pro Nobis
John Bess - read an excerpt
Saving My Breath
Tamara Dean - read an excerpt
Watching My Mother Hallucinate
Diana Hume George - read an excerpt
Foreign Bodies
Grace Talusan
You Have the Right to Remain Silent
Pamela Skjolsvik
See the Difference
Sue William Silverman
Keeping Up Appearances [special content found only in book!]
Leslie Einhaus
Do No Harm [special content found only in book!]
Pamela Lane
In Praise of Osmosis
Jill Drumm
Reviews
This compilation of life stories of people seeking treatment for illnesses accurately portrays the many aggravating factors that patients (and their families) face, along with their disease, as they encounter the U.S. health care system. The essays confirm the poor communication that often exists between health care providers themselves, providers and their patients, ans representatives of agencies and payers. The book includes poignant descriptions of the effects of inadequate resources, lack of staff, multiple errors, and unsafe conditions within hospitals and other agencies that provide health care. The editor describes very specifically the health care crisis taking place in the U.S., and urges an end to the silence about the terrifying situations that many patients experience and the huge number of errors occurring in the health care delivery system. The stories demonstrate many similarities and particularly point out how unsafe practices can result from poor communication between patients, providers, and payers. With today's high technology and the potential for offering the best medical treatments in the world, the U.S. health care system is seriously challenged and unable to offer quality care to all patients. Summing up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through professionals/practitioners; general readers.
Reviewed by S. C. Grossman, Fairfield University, for Choice (March 2008).
Devoted
to the theme “Silence Kills: Speaking Out and Saving Lives,” this issue
proves editor Lee Gutkind’s premise that “less literary” topics also
lend themselves to artful writing as well as the detailed reporting
associated with journalism. I agree wholeheartedly. In these essays,
the authors recount their often frustrating – sometimes edifying –
experiences with the health care system using a variety of narrative
styles and tones, but all of a very high caliber. The authors treat
such varied topics as blindness, overmedication, kidney dialysis,
hepatitis, a gastrointestinal disorder; and all of the authors slip in
enough medical information so that non-specialists can easily
understand. Yet the overarching topic is communication – or lack
thereof – and the implications this process has on the quality of
patient care.
In “The Good Doctor,” readers learn about how a
patient’s wrong lung was biopsied, in “Foreign Bodies” how a
grandfather-doctor relationship goes awry, in “Non Pro Nobis” how John
Bess, who had risked himself to care for patients in the military,
became disenchanted with civilian medicine. Winning the prize for best
essay in this issue with “Missing,” Merilee D. Karr describes her
experience of being sued (and exonerated) for medical malpractice as a
result of the patient lying to her.
I was angered by the
communication problem – indeed medical chauvinism – portrayed in Jill
Drumm’s “In Praise of Osmosis,” when a doctor puts his pride before his
patient’s well-being, so it is no surprise that I rooted for Tamara
Dean when she decided to take a more active role in her treatment for
asthma in “Saving My Breath.”
This is the third volume of CN
devoted to medical topics. An earlier volume, “Rage &
Reconciliation,” was so popular that Southern Methodist University
Press republished it in expanded form as a book, and the current volume
will get the same treatment. Readers who enjoy “Silence Kills” might
also like to check out the The Healing Muse, an annual journal devoted
exclusively to medicine-themed prose and poetry published by SUNY
Upstate Medical University's Center for Bioethics & Humanities.
Reviewed by Jeanne M. Lesinski for New Pages.
152 pages
Edited by Lee Gutkind
Southern Methodist University Press (c) 2007
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"To teach or write the genre without reading Creative Nonfiction would be to commit fraud. I tell my students that."
