A Therapeutic Space for Individuals, Couples, and Families
Surgeon Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, has a lot to say about the unintended consequences of doctors’ failure to acknowledge the dying process. Here’s a case of a young woman whose complicated grief over her mother’s death reflects this failure.
Many doctors feel under pressure to prescribe medications to patients with even moderate anxiety or depression. But it doesn’t have to be that way: Here’s a case of a physician with courage and imagination who takes an unexpected path to help her patient.
This Family Medicine hospital consultation involved a mute patient who had just had her leg amputated. The hospital staff was angry at her. Then this young doctor took the time to learn what was going on and everything changed.
Check out this Op-Ed from The New York Times by Internal Medicine physician Danielle Ofri. She cites a recent Canadian study which shows that empathic, caring conversation from their physical therapists actually reduced the patients’ pain more than a medical procedure designed to treat their condition.
Amy: Sometimes in the course of my work with family doctors, we find ourselves engrossed in conversation that feels unexpectedly