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alldaffer's review against another edition
2.0
I didn't quite think that the author went far enough into how patients could help with their end of life care, or how the medical care system is changing how they take care of terminal patients. It did offer quite a few isolated incidents of how things can go wrong and how things can go well, but now prescription of how to get from the wrong to the well place.
1umbrella1's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Death, Child death, Terminal illness, Cancer, and Blood
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail and Medical trauma
Minor: Pregnancy, Alcohol, Grief, Excrement, Alcoholism, Addiction, Drug abuse, and Car accident
khick5599's review against another edition
3.0
Well told anecdotes put together as a whole reflection of physicians view of mortality and how we can better handle death and dying. Some hard hitting stories, but told often in a loving way.
marblemenow's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
settingshadow's review against another edition
5.0
Final Exam is a beautiful, moving piece of non-fiction. Both scholarly and intensely personal, Dr. Chen's first book is a concise but thorough description of her own experiences with death and dying throughout her medical training and the effect it has had on her professional and personal relationships with the dying. Her experiences are largely universal -- her descriptions of her first patient whose death she felt responsible for echoed -- and she backs them up with citations from the medial literature about the exposures trainees have to death and their reactions.
Despite the fact that I am well-versed in the palliative literature and had read many of the articles Dr. Chen cited her personal experiences lend a depth and character to the discussion that is priceless. Dr. Chen's strength is that she is brutally honest. She describes unflinchingly her avoidance of patients that were dying and her regret of being too terse at times. She discusses events that other medical non-fiction would gloss over.
My only grievances with the book is the end-notes. The book is rife with them (at one point there are three end notes corresponding to a single sentence) and they are not marked at all in the main text, although they are designed to refer to particular sentences in the main text. The end notes are written in a different style than the main narrative, and detract from the flow. By and large they fall into three categories: those that are essential to the text and directly related to the main text; those that are essential to the text, but not directly related to the main text and those that are not essential. The first two categories should have been integrated into the narrative and the third should have been eliminated.
Despite the fact that I am well-versed in the palliative literature and had read many of the articles Dr. Chen cited her personal experiences lend a depth and character to the discussion that is priceless. Dr. Chen's strength is that she is brutally honest. She describes unflinchingly her avoidance of patients that were dying and her regret of being too terse at times. She discusses events that other medical non-fiction would gloss over.
My only grievances with the book is the end-notes. The book is rife with them (at one point there are three end notes corresponding to a single sentence) and they are not marked at all in the main text, although they are designed to refer to particular sentences in the main text. The end notes are written in a different style than the main narrative, and detract from the flow. By and large they fall into three categories: those that are essential to the text and directly related to the main text; those that are essential to the text, but not directly related to the main text and those that are not essential. The first two categories should have been integrated into the narrative and the third should have been eliminated.
kminahan's review against another edition
3.0
While the medical community seems to have done much in recent years to begin to contend with the image of the physician as distant professional more focused on the disease than on the patient, Final Exam contends that this effort has largely failed to deal with one crucial element--death. In a thoughtful work which draws on her own experience as a surgeon while also reflecting on her broader profession, Chen makes a convincing case that this important aspect of medical practice severely overlooked. While her suggestions for solving this problem are not entirely clear, it seems important to ask these questions.
bellacurry's review against another edition
3.0
2.5-3 stars
For a 200 page book, the reflections seemed quite 'common sense' and did not require such lengthy passages to convey. Perhaps this book would've been highly influential at its time of publication, but because there have been similar medical books published in recent years pertaining to 'doctors' views on mortality', this book does not bring any new perspectives to one's perception of mortality. Instead, her conclusions are often things we already know, i.e. 'we need to communicate well with a patient and their family for good medical care'.
Moreover, although Dr. Chen's writing style is generally easy to understand and digest, in certain passages of the book she suddenly uses a plethora of jargon, which would be difficult for any laymen to understand (who are presumably the target audience of this book). She also uses a bit too many descriptive passages for my liking, especially because the book is advertised as 'reflections on mortality', not some creative imagery novel.
For a 200 page book, the reflections seemed quite 'common sense' and did not require such lengthy passages to convey. Perhaps this book would've been highly influential at its time of publication, but because there have been similar medical books published in recent years pertaining to 'doctors' views on mortality', this book does not bring any new perspectives to one's perception of mortality. Instead, her conclusions are often things we already know, i.e. 'we need to communicate well with a patient and their family for good medical care'.
Moreover, although Dr. Chen's writing style is generally easy to understand and digest, in certain passages of the book she suddenly uses a plethora of jargon, which would be difficult for any laymen to understand (who are presumably the target audience of this book). She also uses a bit too many descriptive passages for my liking, especially because the book is advertised as 'reflections on mortality', not some creative imagery novel.
alimata's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Terminal illness, Medical content, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Gore