emotions

The Dirty Secret About Medical Errors

As physicians we see medicine as a science. We think of ourselves as rational, evidence-based practitioners. But we are far less rational than we tell our patients and ourselves that we are. More

Can We Let Doctors Be Human?

Is our vision clouded because we are so immersed in the world of sickness? Is it because this helps reinforce the power dynamic that has kept patients “in their place” for centuries? Or might it be because, like our patients we doctors are scared down to our bones? If we were to see our patients living the lives that we live, then there would be nothing to separate them from us. And then we could easily become them. More

An Epidemic of Disillusioned Doctors?

“That’s it,” I thought, after an overwhelming morning in clinic. “I quit!” It’s a thought that crosses the minds of the majority of doctors, it seems. A survey of more than 13,000 doctors found that more than two-thirds feel negatively about their profession. More

Lancet review of “What Doctors Feel”

What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine is as close to a page-turner as a clinician’s story is likely to become. What Doctors Feel deserves to be well received and widely read. More

NPR Interview with Brian Lehrer: Empathy for “Undesirable” Patients

Doctors have notorious contempt for alcoholics, drug addicts, and morbidly obese patients, and they often make little effort to conceal it. By unspoken rules, these patients are considered fair game for jokes by medical personnel at all levels. Hospital slang for such patients reflects not just disgust but also anger and resentment. More

When Doctors Feel Fear

I remember the first time I laid eyes on an actual amygdala, after slicing through a brain with a repurposed kitchen knife in neuroanatomyclass. That’s it? I thought. That nickel-size splotch tucked below the temporal lobes was the seat of my fears? It was monumentally underwhelming and even lacked
the poetic almond shape that its Latin name connotes.
More

New York Times review of “What Doctors Freel”

This book’s hallmark is honesty, particularly when it comes to the emotional fallout of her medical mistakes. More

Fear is a Primal Emotion

This was it—the first code I was in charge of. After two years of racing to codes as a first- and second-year resident, now suddenly, the code was mine. I was the one to call the shots, to direct the care, to assign the jobs, to make the decisions….Shit! More

The Darkest Year of Medical School?

Next month, your future doctor will take the first steps into clinical medicine. I am not talking about the first day of internship (though that also happens on July 1), but the monumental transition that medical students make at the halfway point of medical school from the classroom years to the clinical years. More

Boston Globe review of “What Doctors Feel”

A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician struggling to do the best for her patients while navigating an imperfect health care system that often seems to value “efficiency,” measured in dollars and minutes, more than the emotional well-being of either physician or patient. More

Medical Errors and the Culture of Shame

It was probably our eighth or ninth admission that day, but my intern and I had given up counting. I was midway through my medical residency, already a master of efficiency. You had to be, or you’d never keep up. This one was a classic eye-roller: a nursing home patient with dementia, sent to the emergency room for an altered mental status. When you were juggling patients with acute heart failure and rampant infections, it was hard to get worked up over a demented nonagenarian who was looking a little more demented. More

Publishers Weekly review of “What Doctors Feel”

An eloquent and honest take on the inner life of medical professionals. Ofri’s passionate examination of her own fears and doubts alongside broader concerns within the medical field should be eye-opening for the public—and required reading for medical students. More