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Better
- A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Categories: Health & Wellness, Medicine & Health Care Industry
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The history of surgery in 28 famous operations - from Louis XIV to JFK, and from Einstein to Houdini. In Under the Knife, surgeon Arnold Van de Laar uses his own experience and expertise to tell the witty history of the past, present and future of surgery. From the story of the desperate man from 17th-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe infection, Under the Knife offers all kinds of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history.
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It takes courage to love the things of this world when all of them, without fail, are fleeting. Yet when everything you have been and done and meant to the world is being prised from your grasp, human connections are the vital medicine. It is other people who make the difference. Rachel Clarke grew up spellbound by her father's stories of practising medicine. Then, as a doctor herself, one who specialised in palliative medicine, she found herself contemplating all her training had taught her in the face of her own beloved father's mortality.
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- By Mnd on 29-05-20
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- Narrated by: Selva Rasalingam
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There are two ways to open a child's head. The pretty way and the quick way. Usually I shave the hair, use a scalpel to nick the skain then apply an electro-cautery device to burn down to bone level. It's a slow, precise method and it leaves almost no scarring. But it takes time. Time, the interminable single note of the heart monitor reminds me, I don't have....
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Admissions. A life in brain surgery.
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Although Professor Stephen Westaby was born with the necessary coordination and manual dexterity, it was a head trauma sustained during university that gifted him the qualities of an exceptional heart surgeon: qualities that are frequently associated with psychopathy. His 35-year career has been characterised by fearlessness and ruthless ambition, leaving empathy at the hospital door as thousands of patients put their lives in his hands.
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An insight on the 'sharp end" of our NHS.
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The Emperor of All Maladies
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A comprehensive history of cancer – one of the greatest enemies of medical progress – and an insight into its effects and potential cures, by a leading expert on the illness. In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years.
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Remarkable
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Random House presents the audiobook edition of Also Human by Caroline Elton, read by Rachel Bavidge. Doctors are the people we turn to when we fall ill. They are the people we trust with our lives and with the lives of those we love. Yet who can doctors turn to at moments of stress or when their own working lives break down?
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A must read for educational supervisors of doctors
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Following in the wake of hugely successful medical memoirs such as Do No Harm and Fragile Lives, Critical is an intelligent, compelling and profoundly insightful journey into the world of intensive care medicine and the lives of people who have forever been changed by it.
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These are the extraordinary realities of the NHS front line. From the historic junior doctor strikes to the 'humanitarian crisis' declared by the Red Cross, the overstretched health service is on the precipice. This is a powerful polemic on its systematic degradation and a letter of optimism to that same health service and those who support it. It captures with tenderness a new doctor's experiences of an NHS at breaking point.
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Terrible narrator, patronising + devoid of humour
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Fragile Lives
- A Heart Surgeon's Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table
- By: Stephen Westaby
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Grim Reaper sits on the heart surgeon's shoulder. A slip of the hand and life ebbs away. The balance between life and death is so delicate, and the heart surgeon walks that rope between the two. In the operating room, there is no time for doubt. It is flesh, blood, rib retractors and pumping the vital organ with your bare hand to squeeze the life back into it. An off day can have dire consequences - this job has a steep learning curve, and the cost is measured in human life. Cardiac surgery is not for the faint of heart.
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What a book, what a man
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Are you the F--king Doctor?
- Tales from the Bleeding Edge of Medicine
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- Narrated by: Matthew Forsythe
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Family doctor, Irishman, musician, award-winning author, anarchist and recovering morphine addict, Liam became a columnist for the British Medical Journal in 1994. He went on to write for many major publications, winning a series of prestigious awards; in 2005, he was the first doctor to win Columnist of the Year in the Periodical Publishers Association awards. The book contains a selection of Liam’s best work, from his columns, blogs and short stories.
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Hard going
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With the End in Mind
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What colour is cancer? Why do some people appear to have made miraculous recoveries? How can you tell when someone is in the final hours of their life? How can we ensure our most vulnerable are treated with the dignity they deserve? In this unprecedented memoir, a palliative medicine pioneer explores the biggest taboo in our society and the only certainty we all share: death. Kathryn Mannix immortalises the thousands of men and women she has seen off.
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Brilliant
- By Debi Rutter on 22-01-18
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War Doctor
- Surgery on the Front Line
- By: David Nott
- Narrated by: David Nott
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than 25 years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital.
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Inspiring
- By Kirstine on 07-03-19
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When the Air Hits Your Brain
- Tales from Neurosurgery
- By: Frank T Vertosick Jr. MD
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick, Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick's patients and unsparing-yet-fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.
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Great book... SHOCKING NARRATOR!!!
- By Rachael allen on 09-11-20
Summary
The struggle to perform well is universal, but nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine.
In his new audiobook, 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.
His vivid stories take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to a polio outbreak in India and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors' participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of handwashing. Finally, he gives a brutally honest insight into life as a practising surgeon.
Unflinching but compassionate, Gawande's investigation into medical professionals and their progression from good to great provides a detailed blueprint for success that can be used by everyone.
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- Kate Harrison/Helm
- 03-11-19
Interesting, but less relevant to Europe/non-docs
I've enjoyed two of the, author's previous books. This one had some interesting stories and was well written but it's very US focused and more suitable for health workers than a general reader
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- Henryque Lopes Do Amaral Oliveira Farias
- 25-01-20
Great book
A must read for every MD, specially surgeons. Outstanding work from Dr Atul G. Yy