cover image Equal Partners: A Physician's Call for a New Spirit of Medicine

Equal Partners: A Physician's Call for a New Spirit of Medicine

Jody Heymann. Little Brown and Company, $22.95 (257pp) ISBN 978-0-316-35993-1

What happens when a doctor is admitted to the hospital with a serious condition? For Heymann, an intern and a graduate of both the Harvard Medical School and the Kennedy School of Government, it was a harrowing yet vastly enlightening experience. Heymann was placed in neurological intensive care after a seizure; thus began her year and a half as both doctor and patient, as well as parent, chronicled in this spirited account. It is a critique of present doctor-patient relationships and a call for changes in medical education to sensitize future physicians to their patients' concerns as well as to their ailments. As a patient excluded from medical decisions affecting her own case, even misdiagnosed and callously treated, Heymann speaks candidly of her vulnerability. As a physician, she urges fundamental changes in medical practice so that ``doctors would be trained and allowed time to share understanding and decision making with patients.'' (Mar.)