Table 1

Supplemental Reading Program

• Branch W, Suchman A. Meaningful experiences in medicine. Am J Med 1990;88:56-9. Clinicians discuss personally meaningful and rewarding interactions with their patients.
• Candib L. What doctors tell about themselves to patients: implications for intimacy and reciprocity in the relationship. Fam Med 1987;19(1):23-30. Candib promotes the use of self-disclosure to strengthen our abilities to develop therapeutic relationships with patients.
• Cassell E. The nature of suffering and the goals of medicine. N Engl J Med 1982;306:639-45. A description of the nature and causes of suffering in patients undergoing medical treatment. Our personal favorite.
• Eisenberg L. The search for care. Daedalus 1977;106:235-46. Thoughtful reflections on providing health care: why it is hard and how to do better, both personally and societally. A rationale for including ritual and “magic” in encounters with patients.
• Engel G. The need for a new medical model: a challenge for biomedicine. Science 1977;196:129-35. Where the term biopsychosocial made its debut.

Issues in the Medical Community—Economics, Technology, and Education

• AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. Caring for the poor. JAMA 1993;269:2533-7. This report examines the individual medical practitioner’s ethical obligation to treat the poor.
• Cassell E. The sorcerer’s broom: medicine’s rampant technology. Hastings Center Report 1993;23:32-9. Emerson noted, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” This work assesses how we can make technology part of humanistic medical care.
• Cohen J. Remembering the real questions. Ann Intern Med 1998;128;563-6. An internist argues for a refocus on the fundamental concerns in patient care as a pathway out of “marketplace” medicine.
• Eisenberg L. Medicine—molecular, monetary, or more than both? JAMA 1995:274:331-4. A psychiatrist looks at the perils of reducing medicine to genetics, lab tests, and business as usual.
• Hart JT. Relation of primary care to undergraduate education. Lancet 1973;2:778-80. An amazingly relevant article considering it was written by a British general practitioner in 1973.
• LaCombe M. Caring for strangers. Ann Intern Med 1997;128:329-30. A tale depicting the effect of medical education on a student’s ideals.
• Nadelson C. Ethics and empathy in a changing health care system. Pharos 1996;fall:29-32. A discussion of the pressures of economics and new models of practice and their effects on the physician-patient relationship and its ethical underpinnings.
• Reiser D. Struggling to stay human in medicine: one student’s reflections on becoming a doctor. New Physician 1973;22(5):294-9. A medical student explores the irony of the dehumanization in the process of learning to help people.
• Relman AS. What medical graduates need to know but don’t learn in medical school. J Am Board Fam Pract 1990;3(suppl):49-52. A former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine promotes “social medicine” as the missing component of undergraduate medical education.
• Young J. Toenails and heart transplants: technology challenges humanistic medicine. Pharos 1987;summer:2-6. An organ transplant specialist draws on literature and other sources in discussing the complexities of humanism amidst technological advances.

Issues in Physician-Patient Encounters: Communication, Uncertainty, and Death

• Donnelly W. The language of medical case histories. Ann Intern Med 1997;127:1045-8. A discussion of how words, especially those of the written record, can shape how physicians and medical students approach their patients.
• Jecker N, Carrese J, Pearlman R. Caring for patients in cross-cultural settings. Hastings Center Report 1995;25:6-14. The authors propose an approach to cross-cultural encounters based on shared recognition of patient goals and mutually agreeable strategies.
• Goldstein J. Desperately seeking science: the creation of knowledge in family practice. Hastings Center Report 1990;20:26-32. Philosophical perspectives on facing uncertainty in clinical encounters.
• Hellerstein D. A death in the glitter palace. North Am Rev 1980;spring:18-23. A touching short story about a medical student’s encounter with a young adult dying of acute myelogenous leukemia. Our one contribution from outside the medical literature.
• Hilfiker D. Allowing the debilitated to die: facing our ethical choices. N Engl J Med 1983;308:716-9. A case report and commentary about how physicians lack preparation for making decisions concerning treatment of debilitated patients.
• Hilfiker D. Facing our mistakes. N Engl J Med 1984;310:118-22. The story of how one rural family physician deals with a tragic mistake and his recommendation that physicians learn to acknowledge their errors. The subsequent letters to the editor (N Engl J Med 1984;310:1675-7) are equally thought provoking.
• Van McCrary S, Christensen R. Slang “on board:” a moral analysis of medical jargon. Arch Fam Med 1993;2:101-4. The authors point to examples of how clinicians use slang and suggest ways to raise physicians’ and students’ awareness of the ways they use medical colloquialisms.
• Ventres W, Gordon P. Communication strategies in caring for the underserved. J Health Care Poor Underserved 1990;1: 305-14. Three strategies to overcome problems in communicating with economically marginalized patients. Every author deserves to cite himself.

Family Medicine

• Loxterkamp D. Being there: on the place of the family physician. J Am Board Fam Pract 1991;4:354-9. Life magazine’s “official” family doctor’s thoughts on his personal role with patients. (See Life [June 1998;48-62] for a day-in-the-life look at Dr Loxterkamp’s world.)
• Rosenblatt R. Confronting the millennium: family medicine in the late 20th century. Fam Med 1990;22(1):46-51. One position on where family medicine fits into the present (and future) of medical practice.
• Stephens G. Family medicine as counterculture. Fam Med 1989;21(2):103-9. An early clarion call for the establishment of academic family medicine.
• Stephens G. The best ideal in family practice. J Am Board Fam Pract 1991;4:223-8. A discussion of why, at its best, family medicine is better described as personal medicine.
• Ventres W. Cultural encounters and family medicine: six lessons from South America. J Am Board Fam Pract 1997;10:232-6. Lessons that are evident anywhere family physicians tend to their patients.

Potpourri—Supplemental Readings on the Human Side of Medical Practice

• Reynolds R, Stone J. On doctoring: stories, poems, essays. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-sponsored anthology of literary selections, ranging from the Bible to Kurt Vonnegut’s Fortitude.
• Selections from the following ongoing series: A piece of my mind (JAMA), On being a doctor (Ann Intern Med), Lessons from the practice (West J Med), Reflections (J Gen Intern Med), and Dimensions (J Fam Pract). Some examples include:

• Brancati FL. The art of pimping. JAMA 1989;262:89-90. Humorous hope for medical students as they dodge and bluff this traditional practice.
  
• Calman N. No shattered vision. JAMA 1993;269(5):638. A broken windshield provides this South Bronx physician with an opportunity to reaffirm his hope and consider the rewards of working in an impoverished neighborhood.
  
• Gordon S. Letter to a patient’s doctor. Ann Intern Med 1998;129:333-4. A patient’s perspective on a doctor’s difficulty in discussing issues concerning death.
  
• Siegler E. April may be cruel, but November’s pretty lousy, too. Ann Intern Med 1996;125:774-5. A humorous example of how true empathy requires first-hand experience.
  
• Yost D. The mark of a survivor. JAMA 1988;259:578. A physician in the emergency department, who takes the time to listen to a patient’s tale, learns of the life behind an apparently straightforward clinical case.