A psychologist's stories of doctors who seek to help others but can't help themselves
From Ben Casey to St. Elsewhere, from ER to Grey's Anatomy, from MASH to House, the medical drama has been a mainstay of modern culture, and for good reason: to step inside a doctor's office is to invite the utmost scrutiny of our thoughts, our actions, our lives. Little wonder then that we seek in art to return the favor, asking: Who are these people, whom we trust when we are at our most vulnerable? And what does that responsibility do to the people who hold it?
These are the questions that animate The Doctor with No Skin. Caroline Elton, a psychologist, has spent the past twenty years working as a medical psychologist, helping physicians grapple with the challenges that not only keep them from doing their jobs, but threaten to destroy their lives. Readers will meet a man who became an obstetrician because, as a homosexual, he couldn't bear the thought of treating patients to whom he might become sexually attracted; and a man whose sexual anxieties around female patients end up destroying his career. There's a doctor who eats raw chicken so that, food poisoned, he won't have to go to work, and a doctor who, having lost her father to cancer, faints every time she has a patient with the disease. And there are those who can be thoughtless about the illnesses they are meant to treat.
At its heart, The Doctor with No Skin is a multifaceted meditation on the emotional lives of physicians, and how those aspects of every human's life are ignored when physicians are trained, leaving a high price to be paid by individual physicians and, often, the patients they treat. Entering a doctor's office can be a terrifying ordeal. As Elton makes so vividly clear, that can be even truer for the physician in the room than it is for us patients. The Doctor with No Skin, in excavating the inner lives of physicians, offers readers true medical drama and the hope of a more honest and brighter future for doctors and patients alike.
Industry Reviews
"[Elton's] description of the psychological forces underlying the ways doctors act--avoidance coping, intellectualization, suppression, repression--is fascinating."--Literary Review (UK)
"A vivid, compelling account of how wounded healers may struggle to find healing. Elton has helped hundreds of doctors through crises in their personal and professional lives, and her stories read as an urgent manifesto to reform the caring professions--that they might begin to care for their own. With reference from the psychological literature, as well as her own extensive clinical experience, she examines why some doctors are overwhelmed by the pressures of medicine, while others may even thrive under them."--Gavin Francis, physician and author of Adventures in Human Being and Shapeshifters
"At a time when burnout and depression among doctors have reached epidemic proportions, Caroline Elton masterfully dissects the issues to explain how we arrived at this point. Ultimately, we must remember that doctors are Also Human and we need a comprehensive approach to uplift the emotional well-being of the medical workforce."--Eric Topol, Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research Institute and author of The Patient Will See You Now
"At the heart of this book is the problem of how emotional resilience can be identified in prospective doctors and strengthened in practicing doctors. We are fallible human beings, not omniscient gods."--Henry Marsh, Sunday Times (UK)
"Elton is particularly good on the subtle matters of gender and ethnic discrimination that punish doctors who are different from the white, male mainstream.... A useful adjunct to books from within medicine by the likes of Richard Selzer [and] Atul Gawande."--Kirkus
"Elton...passionately advocates for paying greater attention to the unique emotional needs of physicians."--Health Affairs
"Elton, a vocational psychologist, spent the last 20 years observing, counseling, and helping very real, vulnerable, and wholly human people in the medical field.... Written in a welcoming style, this practical and helpful look at best medical practices will benefit patients, practitioners, and everyone else involved in health care."--Booklist
"Fascinating and troubling. Read it and weep."--Susie Orbach, author of Fat Is a Feminist Issue
"For patients and doctors alike, this book is required reading."--Daily Mail (UK)
"Haunting, beautiful, and urgent."--Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections
"This important and much needed book describes the psychological difficulties of doctors in training and in practice and the woeful lack of support to them from teachers, colleagues, and institutions."--LitMed
"With a compassionate eye for detail and a deep understanding of just how the systems we train and practice in as doctors can fail us as human beings, Caroline Elton offers a crucial and timely reminder that doctors arealso human."--Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal
"Written with perceptive sympathy for the wounded healer, it is necessary reading for both doctors and patients."--Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
