Faculty Bibliography

Writing from personal experience, physician and author Danielle Ofri asks what evidence is needed to justify trying to humanize medical training via the power of literature.

Medical caregivers are always telling stories because stories provide meaning to much of their working lives. Although there is surely an element of shock value in the stories that medical professionals choose to share, the compulsion to tell a story is largely motivated by the profound emotions kindled by the clinical experience. This impulse needs to be recognized by the profession, even nurtured. However, as Wells and colleagues highlight in this issue, social media adds a new twist to storytelling. Exponential amplification combined with lack of space for nuance is a toxic brew. This needs to be explicitly emphasized with medical trainees. Although privacy rules already exist, the meaning of professionalism is to cleave to the spirit of the law, not just the letter of the law. Caregivers' primary duty is toward patients, not to writing careers or to online following. Consent should be obtained wherever possible. Identifying characteristics must be changed. Any story that might be damaging, hurtful, or embarrassing to a patient does not belong in the public sphere. Nevertheless, those in medicine need to recognize that the impulse to tell a story is innate in the human race, especially so in the caregiving professions. Experienced caregivers need to help students understand that stories provide depth and meaning to medicine but, when broadcast inappropriately, can cause harm.

Danielle Ofri reviews "Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories," by Terrence Holt

Two recent studies in The Journal of the American Medical Association are the first to seriously evaluate the role of M.O.C. in physician quality and medical costs

Danielle Ofri reviews "On the Cancer Frontier: One Man, One Disease, and a Medical Revolution," by Paul A. Marks and James Sterngold

Danielle Ofri reviews "Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies and the Making of a Medical Examiner," by Judy Melinek and T. J. Mitchell

Mr. V. needed to take 90 of those pills each month for the high dosage that his blood pressure required. Representative No. 4 asked me to list all the blood-pressure medications that Mr. V. had been on in the past, including dates of initiation and relevant lab values, a request of epic proportions in his case