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Patient Listening: A Doctor's Guide | 
| Creator: Loreen Herwaldt
Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 667920
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 174
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 1587296527
Dewey Decimal Number: 610
EAN: 9781587296529
ASIN: 1587296527
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
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Product Description
From the fictional portrayal of Dr. Gregory House to Jerome Groopman's bestseller How Doctors Think, both medical professionals and the general public recognize that there is more to the doctor's job than technical practice. Yet why do so many patients come away from their doctors' offices feeling dissatisfied with their interactions? In this welcome addition to the growing field of narrative medicine, physician Loreen Herwaldt uses the illness narratives of two dozen writer-patients to teach listening skills to medical students, residents, physicians, and other health care providers.
Herwaldt skillfully pares each narrative down to its most basic elements, rendering them into powerful found poems that she has used successfully in her role as a teacher and in her own practice. Drawing from narratives by writers who are both emerging and well known, including Oliver Sacks, Richard Selzer, and Mary Swander, each poem reveals the experience of illness and treatment from the patient's perspective. Patient Listening includes a detailed general introduction and a how-to guide that will prove invaluable in the classroom and in clinical practice.
This book will inspire thoughtfulness in everyone who reads it. It is also designed to foster discussions about all aspects of the patient experience from ethics to stigmatization to health insurance. Patient Listening is not just about bedside manner but also about how health care providers can gain the most from their interactions with patients and in turn offer more appropriate treatments, develop more cooperative and responsive relationships with their patients, and thus become better doctors.
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| Customer Reviews:
Great book for all listening professions August 10, 2008
What struck me as a foreign language teacher were the references to the communication problem between doctor and patient as one analogous to the speakers of two different languages, each attempting (or not) to speak intelligibly to the other. The metaphor was not limited to foreign languages per se, although that came up too, but also to different artistic languages: the one med professor had his students go to an art museum to observe paintings "so they could observe patients". The idea is that the doctor is to bring the same heightened engagement with this "foreign language" of painting to his patient, the same sensation of non-understanding that requires all the compensatory observational zeal one can muster -- so that one will be alert to and comprehend the language of his patient's body, the "different kinds of red". (46) Similarly jazz musician Sikou Sundiata only began to comprehend his doctor when he learned that he, too, was a drummer, a percussive artist who could read the tones of his chest the way the artist could feel the rhythms of his drums. But then there were the direct mentions of foreign language: again Sundiata: "Using medical language with doctors was kind of like using my high school French when I went to Paris." And while some of the doctors encouraged him, helped him with the words he didn't know, others wanted to "leave that kind of talk" to them. (99) Finally, my favorite of these references is Richard McCann's "My Body, My Story", where he actually defines the TWO languages being spoken, one the language of medicine by the doctors, and the other the language of his body, "because what you're hearing is me. It's me." (89) And he compares himself to the doctor's Spanish cleaning lady, to whom the doctor explains how to run the dryer in English, and then, in a gesture of grace, says "Gracias" to her. That line is what strikes me as so important for ALL the listening professions: that one learn to bend out of one's familiarity, acknowledge the "other" as valid, and move, however clumsily, toward communication in a language other than one's own. It is a kind of alertness and engagement, borne of the conviction of the limits of the doctor's own knowledge vis-a-vis his patient's "language" -- i.e. his unique "body narrative" -- that this book wishes to awaken. I find it very touching, I think, because the need for that urgency is so much larger than the needs of good medical practice. It is, in a way, simply the need for grace, for "bending a little my way", for loving one's neighbor, for learning foreign languages in the most extended sense of the metaphor, in order that "grace may abound".
There's more to listening to a patient then just comprehending the words coming out of their mouths. August 10, 2008
There's more to listening to a patient then just comprehending the words coming out of their mouths. "Patient Listening: A Doctor's Guide" is a guide for doctors to understanding and interpreting patients' complaints. Better listening, claims author Loreen Herwaldt, creates a better bond between doctor and patient, and improves the quality of treatment all around. "Patient Listening" is a recommended read for all physicians and community library health collections.
The Patient's Voice May 14, 2008
What a novel and remarkable way to write the patient's voice. Dr. Herwaldt has captured the essence of the many aspects of the clinical encounter by distilling interview transcripts of well regarded published authors into what she calls "found poems". She has created a very useful tool for all of us to teach the patient's voice. Eminently readable, this book should be a must read by all medical students and clinicians. It is truly one of the best texts for informing the clinical encounter that I have read. Its simplicity is its beauty and brilliance.
Patient narratives April 1, 2008
There are an increasing number of physician authors who are sharing their stories, etc. in books and articles in the lay press. To this mix, is Physican Listening, an unique and remarkable book. Dr. Herwaldt has taken patient, some of whom are physicians, stories and transformed the prose into poetry. Hence the listing as editor. The poems are moving as they tell stories of patient experiences with physicians, some good and some not so good. While the book is targeted at medical professionals I truly believe they have just as much relevance to the public at large. Further, the perceived magical physician-patient interaction is somewhat illusory. As some of the poems highlight, physicians are patients too and, like my own personal experience, that does not necessarily give one an advantage. In fact it ought not be. Ideally, and recognzizing that we are all individuals, every patient experience ought to be excellent. It is the hope of the editor that in sharing such stories that we physicians and other health care professionals develop better insight into and empathy for the patient. By this measure this book is a great success.
In closing, and to address any perceived conflict of interest, let me note that Dr. Herwaldt and I work at the same institution but have rarely had any professional interaction, including the focus of this book.
From the voices of patients April 1, 2008
Although this was written as a guide for physicians and educators, there is much to recommend it to a wider readership. These are the actual narratives of illness, transmuted by a deft lyrical touch into "found poems", attributed to the teller as author. Each author has a unique voice, yet the poems reveal as much about the listener as they do about the author. In a poignant dedication page, Dr Herwaldt dedicated this book to those who shared their narratives with her, and then named several who died before the book was published. I have been privileged to hear medical students at the University of Iowa stage these as performance pieces. Those students, and any who attended the readings, have surely been changed by the experience. I know that I was. I would recommend this book to anyone who is intrigued by the interaction between patient and physician.
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