Showing titles in Policy & Administration

First went the power. Then came the water, and for five days, the country’s oldest hospital was under siege. The never-before-told story of the heroic doctors, nurses, and patients who fought to survive Hurricane Katrina at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. The story traces a remarkable five-day transformation of an infirm institution, caught in a sea of death and indifference, into an island of care and tenderness.

From New York Times best-selling author Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., comes a science-based call for the immediate removal of the dangerous mercury-containing preservative Thimerosal from vaccines. Over a decade ago, following a sharp rise in developmental disorders such as autism and ADHD, the mercury-containing preservative Thimerosal was widely believed to have been eliminated from vaccine supplies in the United States and abroad.

In the spirit of Oliver Sacks Awakenings and the TV series House, Dr. Eric Manheimer's Twelve Patients is a memoir from the medical director of Bellevue Hospital that uses the plights of 12 very different patients - from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners from Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons - to illustrate larger societal issues.

Mama Might Be Better Off Dead immerses listeners in the lives of four generations of a poor, African-American family in the neighborhood, who are beset with the devastating illnesses that are all too common in America's inner-cities. Headed by Jackie Banes, who oversees the care of a diabetic grandmother, a husband on kidney dialysis, an ailing father, and three children, the Banes family contends with countless medical crises.

E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.

Until very recently, if you were to ask most doctors, they would tell you there were only two kinds of medicine: the quack kind, and the evidence-based kind. The former is baseless, and the latter based on the best information human effort could buy. Well, Eric Topol isn't most doctors, and he suggests you entertain the notion of a third kind of medicine, one that will make the evidence-based state-of-the-art stuff look scarcely better than an alchemist trying to animate a homunculus in a jar.

San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.

The US spends more than any other nation, nearly four trillion dollars, on health care. Yet, for all that expense, the US is not ranked number one - not even close. In Which Country Has the World's Best Healthcare? Ezekiel Emanuel profiles 11 of the world's health-care systems in pursuit of the best or at least where excellence can be found.

In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.

From former head of Obamacare Andy Slavitt, Preventable is the definitive inside account of the United States' failed response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Slavitt chronicles what he saw and how much could have been prevented - an unflinching investigation of the cultural, political, and economic drivers that led to unnecessary loss of life.

A thriving cardiologist, Jauhar has all the qualities you'd want in your own doctor: expertise, insight, a feel for the human factor, a sense of humor, and a keen awareness of the worries that we all have in common. His beautifully written memoir explains the inner workings of modern medicine with rare candor and insight.

Science doesn't speak for itself. Neck-deep in work that can be messy and confounding and naïve in the ways of public communication, scientists are often unable to package their insights into the neat narratives that the public requires. Enter celebrities, advocates, lobbyists, and the funders behind them, who take advantage of scientists' reluctance to provide easy answers, flooding the media with misleading or incorrect claims about health risks. In Bad Advice, Paul A. Offit shares hard-earned wisdom on the dos and don'ts of battling misinformation.

In Shock is a riveting first-hand account from a young critical care physician, who in the passage of a moment is transfigured into a dying patient. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly lays bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.

Offering examples of how to make medicine better for the healers and those they serve, If I Betray These Words profiles clinicians across the country who are tough, resourceful, and resilient, but feel trapped between the patient-first values of their Hippocratic oath and the business imperatives of a broken healthcare system. If I Betray These Words confronts the threat and broken promises of moral injury—what it is; where it comes from; how it manifests; and who’s fighting back against it. We need better healthcare—for patients and for the workforce. It’s time to act.

Based on the film by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science chronicles the history of this unique organization, from its roots as an unlikely partnership between a country doctor and a Franciscan order of nuns to its position today as a worldwide model for patient care, research, and education. The book demonstrates how the institution’s remarkable 150-year history continues to inspire the way medicine is practiced there today.

Our health-care system is in critical condition. The Affordable Care Act has insured more Americans than ever, yet deductibles keep rising and costs continue to climb. Now more than ever, the industry needs a shot in the arm. It needs The Innovator's Prescription, the now-classic approach to efficient, affordable health care.

Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn't Want You to Know examines the inside story behind the headlines, containing accounts from Sabet’s time in the Obama administration, to stunning revelations from whistleblowers speaking out for the first time. What it finds is how the marijuana industry is running rampant without proper oversight, leaving Americans’ health seriously at risk.

Research shows that nothing impacts patient experiences more than the quality of communication. The key to better healthcare outcomes is communication. Over the past four decades, the Academy of Communication in Healthcare has worked tirelessly with health systems, teaching communication skills that put relationships - between patients and providers, as well as among providers - at the center of care. Now, for the first time, ACH's proven and effective methodology is detailed in this invaluable step-by-step guide.

In The Patient Will See You Now, Eric Topol, one of the nation's top physicians, examines what he calls medicine's "Gutenberg moment". Much as the printing press liberated knowledge from the control of an elite class, new technology is poised to democratize medicine. In this new era, patients will control their data and be emancipated from a paternalistic medical regime in which "the doctor knows best."

From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation.