Reviews

In Shock: How Nearly Dying Made Me a Better Doctor by Rana Awdish

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krasmussen's review against another edition

3.0

Honestly I would give this four stars if it just wasn't so meaty. It was hard to get through because of how much metaphorical reflection the author included. That being said, the messages and lessons learned from her experience are life-changing for anyone in health care. Would recommend but get ready to concentrate.

nic55's review against another edition

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This was another required book for school, and I'm so grateful this was assigned. There is a lot broken in the American healthcare system on a structural level and it would take way too long to outline that here. But as someone who intends on working in healthcare, experiencing a story that confronts the emotional gaps of our current system really resonated with me. I've seen and heard of many physicians who come into medicine with wide eyed dreams of saving lives and are then ground down by the way training and for-profit healthcare and countless other factors don't hold space for emotional vulnerability. And even while being empathetic towards that circumstance, I especially appreciated that this book did not absolve physicians, trainees, and other healthcare providers of the harm they've committed to patients. It was just overall very nuanced and written with a lot of compassion. Lastly, I really want to acknowledge the author's vulnerability in telling her story and including as much detail as she did. There was a lot of pain and near-death experiences in here, so I am grateful that she is still here to share this part of her life.

I think this book was a great addition to the beginning of my journey into healthcare, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

pjdas1012's review against another edition

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3.0

"If empathy is the ability to take the perspective of another and feel with them, then, at its best, the practice of medicine is a focused, scientific form of empathy."

A doctor experiences what it's like as a patient and reflects on how it changes here communication with patients.

It's strange and somewhat morbid to think that my favorite genre of books is about people dying or close to death. I gain so many lessons from these people that I may not understand until I am on my own deathbed. This book is very much in that ilk, where the author feels herself die and has to rebuild herself as both a human and a physician. However, this book didn't hit me emotionally quite as much as books like [b:When Breath Becomes Air|25899336|When Breath Becomes Air|Paul Kalanithi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1492677644l/25899336._SX50_.jpg|45424659] or [b:The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying|34104392|The Bright Hour A Memoir of Living and Dying|Nina Riggs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1507193499l/34104392._SY75_.jpg|55126924]. Regardless, the author certainly had an agenda about the lessons she wanted to teach the reader. She wanted us to understand how empathy is necessary in medicine, and how we have to make sure to humanize patients. Showing empathy is a skill that doctors should already be well-versed in, and the fact that they are not is a systemic problem, as the author illustrates. Similar to other books that talk about empathy in medicine, I felt there was a wealth of figurative language and abstract concepts that are challenging to concretely visualize, which may point to why it is so difficult for doctors to embrace these lessons. For example, the author often talks about "being present in the moment," but rarely do people actually discuss what that looks like in practice. To really get the point across to the intended audience, books encouraging empathy in medicine will need to speak in the concrete, scientific terms that health care practitioners live in.

2uysynb1z's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

chelslynn5's review against another edition

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5.0

Wow. This book is incredible. The raw truth in this book brought me to tears, and opened my eyes to all the damage we can cause as acute healthcare providers without even knowing it, not only to our patients, but to ourselves as well.
Everyone in acute healthcare needs to read this book.

brothena's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

2.0

This book came out (and I remember hearing about it) during my last year of residency. I distinctly recall speaking to one of my inpatient attendings about it and resolved to read it, even though I typically avoid reading medical-adjacent books since I read to disconnect from that part of my brain. So here I am, 5 years later picking it up as I try to chip away at backlist titles. Consumed on audio which is NOT read by the author (as evidenced by mispronunciation of medical jargon, frequent spelling out N.I.C.U, etc).

I think I may have enjoyed this book more had I read it while in training, or while I was actively in an inpatient setting. I'm an outpatient primary care physician, and as such, have to take into account patient values, logistics of attaining medication/ treatment, and engage in shared-decision-making on a 25-times-a-day basis. As such, the big morals of the importance of keeping these things in mind felt unnecessarily preachy and redundant to me as this is the crux of my field, but is decidedly much more difficult in higher acuity situations such as inpatient / emergency practice.

I also felt very scoff-y at the segment where Awdish is caustic towards the attitude of an attending who told her during her training of the importance of depersonalizing patients in order to not become too emotionally involved to focus on appropriate medical decision making. In high-acuity care scenarios, this IS applicable, but you would be hard-pressed to find a physician who would advocate this mindset all the time. A degree of emotional separation needs to be in place in order to be able to move on to the next patient after seeing devastating outcomes. It felt so overly simplistic an attitude to just say "hey, you should really care about and for your patients, let yourself get emotionally involved" as it so clearly can cloud judgement in extremes. There is a time and a place, and I've never felt unprofessional or been made to feel that way when I have cried with patients, but girl-- during a resuscitation (which is the example used) is just NOT THE TIME.

I was similarly HUH about the section regarding physician suicide, and again wondered how long ago Awdish was in training, as this is widely known to be a big issue in the field and can't imagine any residency program responding as callously as hers purportedly did.

I did appreciate her candor in discussing how isolating being a physician can feel in terms of decompressing after the gravity of discussions being held on a daily basis, and often feel lucky that my partner is also in the field and do not have to wrestle with not having that outlet (her partner is not in medicine).

Also, in reading these reviews I am VERY EYEROLLY at the reviews that essentially preach WELL OF COURSE, ALL PHYSICIANS ARE HEARTLESS ASSHOLES AND NURSES ARE THE TRUE EMPATHS. Everyone in this field has encountered both of these, but the inverse can also be true. Nurses have more face-to-face time with the patients, which can and often creates an invaluable bond and information source, but to extrapolate that most physicians simply don't "care enough" to "take the time" is so wildly offensive, simplistic, and inaccurate.

Also, in reading these reviews, do not agree with the sentiment that Awdish is some sort of sociopath in how she dealt with the loss of her first child. When you are in the field and have the ability to intellectualize grief over something so emotionally gutting, I think this can be a natural response.

Overall, I think this can be a humbling read for physicians that can serve as a reminder as to how powerless it can feel to be a patient, and how much weight phrasing and verbiage can have, but definitely think it's written in the extremes. Not sure if I would recommend widely, or even if I"m glad I read it, but think it may have just felt redundant to me based on my specialty.