
Healing Children
A Surgeon's Stories from the Frontiers of Pediatric Medicine
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Kurt Newman M.D.
-
By:
-
Kurt Newman M.D.
About this listen
A groundbreaking medical memoir by one of our nation's leading pediatric surgeons - the visionary head of Children's National.
Anyone who has seen a child recover from a wound or a broken bone knows that kids are made to heal. Their bodies are more resilient, more adaptive, and far more able to withstand acute stress than adults'. In this inspiring memoir, Dr. Kurt Newman draws from his long experience as a pediatric surgeon working at one of our nation's top children's hospitals to make the case that children are more than miniature adults. Through the story of his own career and the stories of the brave kids he has treated over the years - and their equally brave and tenacious parents - he reveals the revolution that is taking place in pediatric medicine.
When he decided to become a pediatric surgeon, the field was in its infancy, struggling for esteem. Now, nearly 40 years later, it is at the forefront of exhilarating new discoveries in everything from cancer research to mental health care. But few parents know how to access the best care for their children. Far too many find themselves frustrated and afraid.
Dr. Newman wrote this book to help guide parents - not just of sick kids but of all kids - and to share his knowledge of what children need to thrive. A deeply human story with a spectacular cast of young heroes and heroines, Healing Children will convince you that we still have a lot to learn from our kids.
©2017 Kurt Newman (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
All That Moves Us
- A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience
- By: Jay Wellons
- Narrated by: Jay Wellons
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tumors, injuries, ruptured vascular malformations—there is almost no such thing as a non-urgent brain surgery when it comes to kids. For a pediatric neurosurgeon working in the medical minefield of the brain—in which a single millimeter in every direction governs something that makes us essentially human—every day presents the challenge, and the opportunity, to give a new lease on life to a child for whom nothing is yet fully determined and all possibilities still exist.
-
-
The best narration I've heard in a long time.
- By Zoe on 10-29-22
By: Jay Wellons
-
Complications
- A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This audio is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form, but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human. Atul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad.
-
-
FALLIBILITY, MYSTERY AND UNCERTAINTY
- By AnnH on 10-04-20
By: Atul Gawande
-
Life on a Knife’s Edge
- A Brain Surgeon’s Reflections on Life, Loss and Survival
- By: Dr Rahul Jandial
- Narrated by: Rahul Jandial
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As one of the world's leading brain surgeons, Dr Jandial is the last hope for many patients who have extreme forms of cancer - patients who can't be saved, but deserve more time. Life on a Knife's Edge is his account of the resilience, courage and belief he has witnessed in his patients, and the lessons he has learned from them.
-
-
Amazing
- By Brenda on 07-17-21
By: Dr Rahul Jandial
-
Every Deep-Drawn Breath
- A Critical Care Doctor on Healing, Recovery, and Transforming Medicine in the ICU
- By: Dr. Wes Ely
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner, Dr. Wes Ely
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the next ten years, 40 to 60 million people in this country will be admitted to the ICU. Most of these hospitalizations will be sudden, unexpected, and harrowing experiences that can alter patients and their families physically and emotionally, with effects that endure for years. In this rich blend of science, medical history, profoundly humane patient stories, and personal reflection, Dr. Wes Ely describes his mission to prevent patients from being inadvertently harmed by the technology that is keeping them alive.
-
-
A clarion call in medicine
- By S. Langdon on 09-13-21
By: Dr. Wes Ely
-
White Hot Light
- Twenty-Five Years in Emergency Medicine
- By: Frank Huyler
- Narrated by: Gary Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic. Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor’s edge between life and death.
-
-
Even Better than The Blood of Strangers
- By Elizabeth Darcy on 10-14-20
By: Frank Huyler
-
When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
-
-
Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
-
All That Moves Us
- A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience
- By: Jay Wellons
- Narrated by: Jay Wellons
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tumors, injuries, ruptured vascular malformations—there is almost no such thing as a non-urgent brain surgery when it comes to kids. For a pediatric neurosurgeon working in the medical minefield of the brain—in which a single millimeter in every direction governs something that makes us essentially human—every day presents the challenge, and the opportunity, to give a new lease on life to a child for whom nothing is yet fully determined and all possibilities still exist.
-
-
The best narration I've heard in a long time.
- By Zoe on 10-29-22
By: Jay Wellons
-
Complications
- A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This audio is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form, but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human. Atul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad.
-
-
FALLIBILITY, MYSTERY AND UNCERTAINTY
- By AnnH on 10-04-20
By: Atul Gawande
-
Life on a Knife’s Edge
- A Brain Surgeon’s Reflections on Life, Loss and Survival
- By: Dr Rahul Jandial
- Narrated by: Rahul Jandial
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As one of the world's leading brain surgeons, Dr Jandial is the last hope for many patients who have extreme forms of cancer - patients who can't be saved, but deserve more time. Life on a Knife's Edge is his account of the resilience, courage and belief he has witnessed in his patients, and the lessons he has learned from them.
-
-
Amazing
- By Brenda on 07-17-21
By: Dr Rahul Jandial
-
Every Deep-Drawn Breath
- A Critical Care Doctor on Healing, Recovery, and Transforming Medicine in the ICU
- By: Dr. Wes Ely
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner, Dr. Wes Ely
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the next ten years, 40 to 60 million people in this country will be admitted to the ICU. Most of these hospitalizations will be sudden, unexpected, and harrowing experiences that can alter patients and their families physically and emotionally, with effects that endure for years. In this rich blend of science, medical history, profoundly humane patient stories, and personal reflection, Dr. Wes Ely describes his mission to prevent patients from being inadvertently harmed by the technology that is keeping them alive.
-
-
A clarion call in medicine
- By S. Langdon on 09-13-21
By: Dr. Wes Ely
-
White Hot Light
- Twenty-Five Years in Emergency Medicine
- By: Frank Huyler
- Narrated by: Gary Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic. Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor’s edge between life and death.
-
-
Even Better than The Blood of Strangers
- By Elizabeth Darcy on 10-14-20
By: Frank Huyler
-
When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
-
-
Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
-
Becoming a Surgeon
- Life in a Surgical Residency and Timeless Lessons Learned Therein
- By: Joe I. Garri
- Narrated by: Mike McCarthy
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Becoming a Surgeon is an inspirational account of Dr. Joe Garri's time spent in general surgery residency. Recounting five years of training through real-life anecdotes and interesting personalities, this compelling book peers through the retrospective lens from Dr. Garri's many years of private practice. Each chapter deals with topics related to the training of surgeons, including the personal sacrifice involved and the challenges of learning the craft. It also addresses the heartwarming and heart-breaking experiences in dealing with patients and their families.
By: Joe I. Garri
-
Do No Harm
- Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
- By: Henry Marsh
- Narrated by: Jim Barclay
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached surgeons, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again.
-
-
Uneven
- By Scott on 06-02-15
By: Henry Marsh
-
Being Mortal
- Medicine and What Matters in the End
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
-
-
A Walk through the Valley of the Shadow
- By George on 11-02-14
By: Atul Gawande
-
Better
- A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The struggle to perform well is universal: each one of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. In this book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.
-
-
A MUST read . . .
- By Kathy in CA on 08-11-14
By: Atul Gawande
-
The Education of a Coroner
- Lessons in Investigating Death
- By: John Bateson
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ken Holmes worked in the Marin County Coroner's Office for 36 years, starting as a death investigator and ending as the three-term, elected coroner. As he grew into the job - which is different from what is depicted on television - Holmes learned a variety of skills, from finding hidden clues at death scenes, interviewing witnesses effectively, managing bystanders and reporters, preparing testimony for court, to notifying families of a death with sensitivity and compassion.
-
-
Excellent read. What an Education.
- By Amazon Customer on 11-10-17
By: John Bateson
-
The House of God
- By: Samuel Shem
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative journey that takes us into the lives of Roy Basch and five of his fellow interns at the most renowned teaching hospital in the country.
-
-
First time I started it I hated it...
- By Tamara T. on 01-20-16
By: Samuel Shem
-
The Trauma Chronicles
- By: Dr Stephen Westaby
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook chronicles the triumphs and failures of his surgical life. Having spent his childhood in the backstreets of a northern steel town, he went on to become one of the world's foremost heart surgeons. His drive for perfection in his profession took him to the world-renowned Harefield Hospital, the foremost heart surgery centre in Birmingham, Alabama and the newly-created Cardiothoracic Centre in Oxford. Then in 2019 in Wuhan he was the first Western doctor to learn about Covid-19 before the virus was identified.
-
American Heroes
- By: James Patterson, Matt Eversmann, Tim Malloy
- Narrated by: Joe Mantegna
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts—from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan—share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America’s most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero.
-
-
EXCELLENT
- By Wilson Che' Gray on 10-25-24
By: James Patterson, and others
-
Open Heart
- A Cardiac Surgeon's Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table
- By: Stephen Westaby
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In gripping prose, one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from death. When Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during open-heart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. As he soon understood, this detachment is a crucial survival strategy in a profession where death is only a heartbeat away. In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be.
-
-
Fascinating!
- By Jason on 03-09-19
By: Stephen Westaby
-
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
-
-
I rarely stop reading a book halfway through...
- By Rusty on 09-04-15
By: Oliver Sacks
-
The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
-
-
Not one boring moment!
- By WRF on 12-22-17
-
One Doctor
- Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
- By: Brendan Reilly
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An epic story told by a unique voice in American medicine, One Doctor describes life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physician. In riveting first-person prose, Dr. Brendan Reilly takes us to the front lines of medicine today.
-
-
Simply Brilliant
- By Blue on 06-20-14
By: Brendan Reilly
Critic reviews
What listeners say about Healing Children
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Devesh Dahale
- 11-09-21
Excellent book about pediatric care and children’s health
An inspiring story written and narrated by an incredible pediatric surgeon, leader and visionary. Thanks to people like Dr Kurt Newman- we can learn from his book how to get inspired and energized to improved the lives of children and give them the best possible fighting chance to have a balanced happy and healthy life. A must read for all who are interested in children’s health.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- K. Robb
- 12-21-23
A remarkable account from the heroic halls of a pioneering children’s hospital
I enjoyed the author’s authentic representation of what it like was to be in his shoes, the reader is privy to Dr. Newman’s emotions, internal struggle as a growing/learning surgeon andI his reactions to his patients and mentors.
I do not know Dr. Newman personally but I am deeply thankful for his honesty, openness to growth and optimism, for his service and for giving voice to these children.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!