What Patients Taught Me Book Review

Book Review on What Patients Taught Me: A Medical Student’s Journey

Details
The title of the book that I have chosen to review is called What Patients Taught Me: A Medical Student’s Journey, the title related to the topic on hand which is about medical rotations in faraway locations that are uncivilized and even remote. The book was published in 2009, and this is significant because it can be relatable to those that are entering the medical field and want a novel that shows the experience and what they have to do for them to become medical professionals. The company Sasquatch Books, which is in Seattle, Washington where she ended up becoming a professor at the University of Washington.
Author
The authors name is Audrey Young and she has received her bachelor’s degree in history from University of California, Berkeley, and an M.D. from the University of Washington, in Seattle. She is board certified in internal medicine and was Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. She currently practices hospital medicine at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland, Washington. She has also published several other books such as, House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital, published in 2009, and

several other publications, such as: Can You Prescribe Something? in Health Affairs, Jan 2006, Vol 25, pp 226-30, as well as House Call in Annals of Internal Medicine, Feb 2005, Vol 142, pp 222-23 and lastly The Hospitalist's Story along with Anneliese Schleyer, in JAMA, Nov 1, 2006, vol 296, pp 2067-68.
Summary
What Patients Taught Me is about the experiences that the author faces through her medical school and training program run by the University of Washington to increase the numbers of general practitioners in rural regions of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho and the state of Montana.

As she travels from a metropolis to the tiny town of Bethel, Alaska, for her first experience with patients. Among the heavily Yupik Eskimo population, she begins to glimpse the depth of the challenges that physicians juggle. She discovers that the social and cultural context is vital to understanding the patient's story, a story that she, as a physician, needs to know in order to help relieve suffering, especially when it comes from a place that is foreign to her own

experience.
A later rotation in pediatrics takes Dr. Young to Pocatello, Idaho. Her idealism smacks against reality as she sees cases of domestic abuse and alcoholism, child abuse and shaken-baby syndrome. Despite anything she could do as a physician, she begins to realize “how much that outside world mattered.” Her optimistic desire for a “revolution” where patients “snap off their televisions, quit smoking, protect their homes with dogs rather than guns, and ease down from the excesses of the American diet” is tempered by her realization that life is often messier and grayer than that.
Dr. Young continues to draw touching and poignant vignettes. Of her internal medicine rotation is Missoula, Montana where she learns from Martha and Milo that “there was such a thing as dying a good death.” Of John and Ginny who decide not to continue John's chemotherapy against an aggressive cancer so they can “go back to the ranch and enjoy our lives, have one more wonderful summer.” Of the vast chasm that exists between first-world and third-word when she practices in Swaziland – poverty, lack of basic medical supplies like penicillin, the high incidence of HIV and tuberculosis – but the commonalities of the human element.

Through her experiences across the Pacific Northwest and the world, Dr. Young concludes that “doctoring is a human act.” From her time in Swaziland, in particular, she embraces the belief that “a doctor who sees suffering must act, rejecting the choice of not acting, even when futility and risk run high.” What Patients Taught Me conveys not only her awareness of, but also her reverence for the sacred, intimate, vulnerable moments of every human life.
Format
The book is organized in a way that helps the reader understand what the author is wanting to tell as a tale, she begins off with the climactic scene in her life, when she first loses her patient and from there on she tells her tale of the life, from school in Berkley to medical school in University of Washington.

Style
The book’s writing style is in the informal writing style because she is writing in a way that becomes persona, and make it seem that she is speaking to the reader, and as well as show emotions, because not only is she an author but she is also a doctor/intern and has made connection with all the patients and the other healthcare coworkers. Also you can tell that it is informal because she uses simple and short sentences so that it is not a difficult to read and understand, in fact she does that to make a point in the story, and she also tries to make words simple for example, in the novel she uses the phrase WWAMI is the University of Washington's decentralized clinical training program (Wyoming, Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho).
Her writing style is a bit of both dogmatic and pragmatic because she is realistic as all as opinionated in what she believes is the right thing to do, she is a human being so she practical because she know that there is a need for doctors in the an area of America that does not have that many people. But she is also theoretical because she know to be a doctor she must have a theoretical and a practical side to continue helping the community. And lastly her writing style is descriptive because in her book describes all the people she has met, as well as all the places she has gone including her trip to Alaska, where she went fishing for salmon and took a ride on a small airplane. Not only that she used sensory items to describe what she sees like when she is sees Martha become unresponsive and knows that it is time to let her go and see what it does to her family and the local doctors that know her. She describes in detail the taste of things that she eats, such as sushi night eating eel and spicy tuna and yellowtail, remembering the texture of it going down her throat. But as a doctor she is more prone to using her writing to be more on the analytical because it means that she is using facts and details to analyze and draw conclusions on things such as prognosis of the patients, and even on herself, seeing that she can do this as she is continuing medical school.
Audience
The author’s main purpose for writing this book is to tell a tale of a medical student who went through her clinical training in non-academic establishments far away from urban civilization. It opened my eyes towards a very important concept, and that is: the comprehensiveness of the medical profession
The book clearly has a defined and specific audience in mind and that is people who are in the medical profession or that they are going into the profession and it is somewhat like a well written memoir, in that she focuses on things that people in the health care profession would understand like the abuse and the neglect of children and that patients are much different than what it says in the textbooks.
This book shifts the focus towards underserved populations and elucidate the importance of primary care not only in the overall healthcare system of a nation, but in shaping the physicians of tomorrow as well. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in health care systems, medical education and anything in the health care field. In fact this book is a must for those that are medical students, this book inspires the notion of getting out of your comfort zone and having the guts to learn on unfamiliar grounds and high-stakes uncertain situations.
Context
This book relates to other works about the same topic because they all have something in familiar in that they tell a tale of their life stories, in this case Audrey Young, the author tell the tale of her experiences in working in rural USA, in which shows that there is a need of more doctors in that area. This book brings contribution in its field because it allows others, such as doctors, nurses and every other health care person can also become writers and tell their stories. This book is a current debate because as the Affordable Care Act is enabled that means that there should be access to healthcare to everyone, but as I was reading people have to be either flown in or drive for miles to reach the closest hospitals or emergency rooms.
Scope
The book has a clear focus as it a memoir about Audrey Young’s medical school rotation, and tell a story that is drastically different than those in other rotation, from Seattle hospitals to rural clinics to Africa. Each place had different stories and different people and gave me insight into what it means to be a doctor.
This book was full of true stories, some I couldn't even believe happened to real people, but they did. And that is what makes this book so powerful. Everything in it is real, especially the people. Real people who were sick and either made full recoveries or went on to a better place. It made me emotional and made me think how hard it is to become a doctor and how much sacrifice it takes to become someone dedicated to their profession. I also commend her that she didn’t become someone who in the end was burned by the profession and gave up, instead she used that as a motivation to continue onwards.
I devoured this book and wished I had read it slower so that I could have digested each story more before rushing onto the next one. But it was so captivating that I couldn't stop. I had to read about the next patient, the next place. I read this in a few hours, when I knew I definitely should have been studying for my exams, especially since it was midterms in a few days.

Perspective
The perspective of this book is of course opinionated because it is a story of her life, she is going to say what she believes is the right thing always. She is biased because she writes about her experiences and writes about the people that have affected and influenced her, in fact she goes into dreamland and image them out of the hospital fishing and riding their horses.
Conclusion
When I was looking for a book to read, I found this book online at Amazon.com and it changed me, it makes me picture myself as a leader or in a team of people who are responsible for those that are in need of help, it also makes me picture myself in a way that I continue my education and work in a rural place as well, I see it every day in my home country where all there is corruption and everything is expensive especially health care. I believe just like many other do that creating relationship and having those experiences makes you a better person. I believe that this book is worth reading because it is a novel that will help you become more aware of your surroundings, surprises you that even in America, a first world country, that there is a need to have more programs for parts of America that is not near hospitals and that do not have any Obstetrics and Gynecology programs. The strength of this book comes from the different patients that she had, those that were on the verge of dying and they survived, to those that find out that they only have a few months and just accept it as it is. I would like to tell everyone that I possibly can that this book is must read, because it’s a story that everyone can comprehend and understand because in the world of people, people die.