"We've all been there, sitting uncomfortably in a paper gown as a doctor impassively describes our prognosis. Sometimes it's simple and treatable. Other times we get news we can't fathom and then are faced with decisions that are literally life and death. In this revolutionary book, physician, behavioral scientist, and bioethicist Peter Ubel, M.D., reveals how hidden dynamics in the doctor/patient relationship keep us and our loved ones from making...

The story of Dr. Faraday, the son of a housemaid, who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. During the long hot summer of 1948, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked. But it is now in decline and its inhabitants, a mother, son, and daughter, are haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life. When he takes on his new patient, Faraday has no idea how closely the family's story is...

"From registered nurse and public health advocate Sana Goldberg, a timely, accessible, and comprehensive handbook to navigating common medical situations. From the routine to the unexpected, How to Be a Patient is your ultimate guide to better healthcare. Let's face it: nobody likes going to the doctor. It can be uncomfortable, nerve wracking, expensive--and that's just for routine care! When it's an emergency--how do you choose between the ER, Urgent...

The trials of a woman with cancer. The doctors she sees attribute her fatigue and headaches to everything but cancer until, finally, one of them discovers a tumor. Which is how she falls into the clutches of Dr. Mark Jacobs whose treatment is accompanied by bullying and proposals of marriage. Now in addition to cancer, she has him giving her headaches.

For the past few decades, technology has been touted as the cure for all of healthcare's ills, yet medicine stubbornly resisted computerization-- until now. Thanks largely to billions of dollars in federal incentives, healthcare has finally gone digital. Wachter examines healthcare at the dawn of its computer age, and shows how technology is changing care at the bedside. He questions whether government intervention has been useful or destructive--...

Discusses how to avoid harmful medical mistakes, offering advice on such topics as working with a busy doctor, communicating the full story of an illness, evaluating test risks, and obtaining a working diagnosis.

Describes the medical and psychological treatment of Lucy, a recovering addict, by her doctor, including her psychological problems connected to the addiction and the doctor's thoughts on how addiction is treated by the medical system.

Three out of four people addicted to heroin probably started on a prescription opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the United States alone, 16,000 people die each year as a result of prescription opioid overdose. But perhaps the most frightening aspect of the prescription drug epidemic is that it's built on well-meaning doctors treating patients with real problems. Combining case studies from her own practice with...

"The Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project blurs the lines between patient and therapist, fiction and documentation, and reality and dark imagination. London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks....