One Doctor
Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Told by a unique voice in American medicine, this epic story recounts life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physician, and is described by The New York Times as “a true service [to history]. Dr. Reilly deserves a resounding bravo for telling it like it is.” Malcolm Gladwell agrees: “Brendan Reilly has written a beautiful book about a forgotten subject—what it means for a physician to truly care for a patient.”
Every review of One Doctor noted its beautiful writing and compelling story, the riveting tension and suspense. “Remarkable with heart-pounding pace and drama” (Publishers Weekly); “a gripping, moving memoir” (Abraham Verghese); “a terrific read” (The Boston Globe); “an astonishingly moving and incredibly personal account of a modern doctor” (The Lancet).
In compelling first-person prose, Dr. Brendan Reilly takes readers to the front lines of medicine today. Whipsawed by daily crises and frustrations, Reilly must deal with several daunting challenges simultaneously. As Reilly’s patients and their families survive close calls, struggle with heartrending decisions, and confront the limits of medicine’s power to cure, One Doctor lays bare a fragmented, depersonalized, business-driven health care system where real caring is hard to find. Every day, Reilly sees patients who fall through the cracks and suffer harm because they lack one doctor who knows them well and relentlessly advocates for their best interests. Filled with fascinating characters in New York City and rural New England—people with dark secrets, mysterious illnesses, impossible dreams, and limitless courage—One Doctor tells their stories with sensitivity and empathy, reminding us of professional values once held dear by all physicians.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
He was chair of medicine at Chicago's Cook County Hospital, on which the hit TV show ER was based, and Reilly now at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center matches the heart-pounding pace and drama of that fictional show in this remarkable memoir. Reilly painstakingly relates his most challenging cases, beginning in the present when he sees 19 ER patients on an average day before backtracking to his early career at Dartmouth in 1985. That year, Reilly struggled to identify the cause of an eccentric and lovable patient's delirium. By the time he figured it out, the patient Fred had died. "ealth providers still feel guilty when things go wrong," Reilly notes of that troubling cold case, but he insists it made him a better doctor. After all, harm is inherent in the pathway to healing: "in a brave new post-Hippocratic world, medicine's venerable first principle had become an empty shibboleth.... First, do no harm?... If we didn't do harm, we couldn't do good." It's a sobering reminder that though medicine is a science, it is not an exact one. Fast-forwarding to today, Reilly describes another wrenching struggle: making end-of-life decisions with his own elderly mother. But his book is about more than the joy of saving lives and the sadness of losing them it's an intimate exploration of modern medicine and the human condition.