October 2017

Drawn to true stories of challenge and triumph, especially if they are set in a medical milieu? Care about improving the health care system? Love good writing that makes you stop and think about your own life? In this series, I'll share some of my favourite and most thought-provoking books on health, healing, and the system around it all. If you are lucky enough to have a local independent bookseller, please consider sourcing these books directly.

A 38-year old man suffers a massive heart attack, his second in 8 months, and complications follow. The author chronicles obstacles and miracles on the road to recovery, with commentary on his care, the importance of his wife’s support and the implications of a prolonged illness. This memoir is well-written, with biting insights and a healthy sense of humour.

In his book, the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness in Medicine shows us how coming to our senses will help us all become more compassionate, aware human beings, and contribute to the healing of the body politic as well as our own lives. (See also his book titled Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness).

Gawande, a surgeon and former Rhodes scholar, illuminates "the moments in which medicine actually happens," and describes his profession as an "enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line." He includes accounts of medical traumas and analysis of doctor anxiety and burnout with humor, sensitivity and critical intelligence.

A wonderfully told story about a young girl’s journey through cancer told by her father. Shane Meader says he wrote this book both as an outlet—“an expression of the many thoughts, emotions and understandings that have filled me to overflowing”. The book is very readable, including both scientific explanations alongside the raw emotions of a father who loves his daughter.

The bookshelf is continually updating—click here to browse all recommended reads.

September 2017

Drawn to true stories of challenge and triumph, especially if they are set in a medical milieu? Care about improving the health care system? Love good writing that makes you stop and think about your own life? In this series, I'll share some of my favourite and most thought-provoking books on health, healing, and the system around it all. If you are lucky enough to have a local independent bookseller, please consider sourcing these books directly.

A gripping and troubling story of a young journalist’s descent into what looks like madness and epilepsy. In a matter of days, Susannah Cahalan went from being one of the most promising new writers at the New York Post to being a violent, psychotic, “difficult” patient—until one particular doctor took the time to consider all the symptoms and to talk directly to her.

An ICU nurse leaves the hospital to explore the world of homecare—tending to people where they live—and found it to be exciting, challenging, fulfilling and fascinating. Comparing the homecare world to what she perceives as the world of waste and excessive use of technology, the author asks a series of provocative questions, all starting with ‘why’.

This is a wonderful collection of stories put together by a wide variety of staff who work for Kaiser Permanente. The stories capture experiences which have both touched and transformed these providers and helped them understand the importance of listening, serving and understanding.

Even being the CEO of KPMG, one of the world’s largest accounting firms, couldn’t keep Eugene O’Kelly from a sudden diagnosis of brain cancer. This is his unforgettable story of the four months between his diagnosis and death—the choices he made about how to use his time and energy, and his reflections on life, love, success, and the search for meaning.

The bookshelf is continually updating—click here to browse all recommended reads.

August 2017

Drawn to true stories of challenge and triumph, especially if they are set in a medical milieu? Care about improving the health care system? Love good writing that makes you stop and think about your own life? In this series, I'll share some of my favourite and most thought-provoking books on health, healing, and the system around it all. If you are lucky enough to have a local independent bookseller, please consider sourcing these books directly.

This book tells the story of one family which begins when their 5-year old son woke up one morning with an uncontrollable urge to shake his head. The reader follows a 13-year odyssey of medication upon medication, treatment upon treatment, and a constantly changing regimen that left the boy and the family feeling like guinea pigs in an out-of-control experiment.

A must-read for everyone… through riveting storytelling and compelling research as well as his own story, Gawande challenges healthcare colleagues to learn to ask, to learn to listen, and to humbly accept that medicine is about improving life and improving the process of its ending.

The search for hope is the most urgent at a patient’s bedside and Groopman takes us into the lives of people at pivotal moments when they reach for and find hope—or when it eludes their grasp. Groopman, a Harvard Medical School professor and New Yorker staff writer says “I see hope at the very heart of healing."

In riveting accounts of medical failure and triumph, Gawande examines how success is achieved in health care. He explores the qualities he associates with diligence and ingenuity from the halls of American hospitals to the fields of war, and from prisons to a district hospital serving 1,400 villages in India. Gawande ends his book with 'Suggestions for Becoming a Positive Deviant', a call to arms to encourage us all to be better.

This book stems from Servan-Schreiber’s personal experience in the field of cancer, as a doctor and as a patient. It is book is full of science and common-sense wisdom and provides compelling evidence and arguments for participating in our own health by supporting our deep natural capacity for healing. While ‘cancer’ is in the title, it translates to all areas of health.

This book is a poignant recounting of the preventable death of a child told by the father. The pages retrace an 18-month battle with the people who failed this little girl and then tried to shirk their responsibilities. On a positive note, the book is also about the changes in hospitals systems and in healthcare providers’ attitudes that came as a direct result of this tragedy.

The bookshelf is continually updating—click here to browse all recommended reads.

July 2017

Drawn to true stories of challenge and triumph, especially if they are set in a medical milieu? Care about improving the health care system? Love good writing that makes you stop and think about your own life? In this series, I'll share some of my favourite and most thought-provoking books on health, healing, and the system around it all. If you are lucky enough to have a local independent bookseller, please consider sourcing these books directly.

This book is called funny, sad, entertaining and insightful—full of vulnerable human moments and joyful camaraderie. The stories are based on 20 years of the author’s life as a nurse, showcasing what she’s learned from both her patients and her colleagues.

Robert Martensen
Martensen, who is both an MD and historian of medicine, demonstrates how we and our loved ones can maintain dignity and resilience in the face of serious and critical illnesses. He raises timely questions about choices we will all have to make.

From an alcoholic doctor to a woman who lost loved ones to accidents and drug addiction, these compelling stories remind us that loss, injustice and setbacks need not diminish us, but can ultimately shore us up.

A collection of true stories that are examples of various types of errors, the impact on all the people affected, and the efforts made to find out what went wrong so that future needless suffering will be avoided in the future.

The bookshelf is continually updating—click here to browse all recommended reads.