An ingenious new approach to educating doctors.
An exploration of “how physicians can see patients better.”
Nussbaum, chief education officer at Denver Health and author of The Finest Traditions of My Calling, agrees that the 19th-century introduction of science into medical education was an admirable revolution that converted medicine to a profession based on human physiology rather than folk beliefs. The result has been miraculous advances in curing diseases and repairing broken bodies, but people still get sick and die. Indeed, they often stay sick longer, take longer to die, and have limited access to appropriate cures. Nussbaum maintains that medical education, now based on the “textbook of the body,” should expand to include the “textbook of the community.” He makes his case by describing a pilot program at the University of Colorado, where he is a professor of psychiatry, and similar programs are being instituted at a few other schools. Medical students traditionally spend their third year in a hospital rotating through the specialties (surgery, obstetrics, psychiatry, etc.). The author describes seven students who do not follow doctors but patients, accompanying them to clinics, emergency rooms, and surgical procedures, as well as to their homes and communities. This approach, as Nussbaum demonstrates, has proven transformative, especially because research shows that “social determinants have more effect on a patient’s health than a physician’s clinical care.” The author also describes how, in the past few decades, medical schools have started paying greater attention to communication skills, and classes now include far more women and people of color. Nussbaum lays out his concepts with refreshing clarity, though he notes that his vision of medical education remains a work in progress. Given the success of the pilot programs so far, readers will hope that the work continues to improve and spread to more medical schools and hospitals.
An ingenious new approach to educating doctors.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781421448947
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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