Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors

'Necessary reading for both doctors and patients.' Hilary Mantel 'A furious dispatch from the front line of the hospital system.' The Times, 'Book of the Week' 'Fascinating and troubling. Read it and weep.' Susie Orbach 'Crucial and timely.' Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal 'Haunting, beautiful, and urgent.' Johann Hari 'At the heart of this book is the problem of how emotional resilience can be identified in prospective doctors and strengthened in practising doctors. We are fallible human beings, not omniscient gods.' Henry Marsh, Sunday Times 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 lives break down? Doctors are no different from everybody else, but their job is like no other. What does it take to confront death, disease, distress and suffering every day? To carry the 'awesome responsibility' of care? To make decisions that can irrevocably change someone's life, or possibly end it? And how do doctors cope with their own questions and fears, when they are expected to have all the answers? Caroline Elton is a psychologist who specialises in helping doctors. For over twenty years she has listened as doctors have unburdened themselves of the pressures of their jobs: the obstetrician whose own fertility treatment failed; the trainee oncologist who found herself unable to treat patients suffering from the disease that killed her father; the brilliant neurosurgeon struggling to progress her career in an environment that was hostile to women. Drawing on extraordinary case studies and decades of work supporting clinicians, Also Human presents a provocative, perceptive and deeply humane examination of the modern medical profession.