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Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You: How to Beat Physician Arrogance, Corporate Greed and a Broken System
How do you take charge of your health and stop turning over your life to our confusing and intimidating healthcare system before it’s too late?
Dr. Erika Schwartz believes that today’s patient is but a leaf blowing in the wind of group-think protocols, corrupt medical societies, insurance companies on the take, and billion dollars in marketing and lobbying pressure from drug companies.
What is the quick fix? The answers are here in the ten clear chapters, giving examples every step of the way. It’s a simple process that takes you, the patient, from being a victim to being in charge.
Developing personal self-confidence, choosing the right doctor for you, walking out on the wrong ones with impunity and making the right choices will add up to great health care with you at the center. Follow the plan and the facts and change your life and that of your loved ones. Life is to be enjoyed not feared. This book will put enjoyment back into your life and remove the fear and intimidation from your healthcare.
Dr. Erika Schwartz believes that today’s patient is but a leaf blowing in the wind of group-think protocols, corrupt medical societies, insurance companies on the take, and billion dollars in marketing and lobbying pressure from drug companies.
What is the quick fix? The answers are here in the ten clear chapters, giving examples every step of the way. It’s a simple process that takes you, the patient, from being a victim to being in charge.
Developing personal self-confidence, choosing the right doctor for you, walking out on the wrong ones with impunity and making the right choices will add up to great health care with you at the center. Follow the plan and the facts and change your life and that of your loved ones. Life is to be enjoyed not feared. This book will put enjoyment back into your life and remove the fear and intimidation from your healthcare.
- GenresNonfictionHealthMedicine
273 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 10, 2015
20 people are currently reading
215 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 29, 2021
Nothing new here! I’m a nurse who left my career 10 years ago . I understand the challenges that this doctor had struggles with. I worked with doctors who had the god complex and would refuse to give pertinent information about their health conditions. I actually got into trouble for showing a patient her chart . Seriously, the patient has a right to know about what is being charted on his/her chart. I discovered that a patient knows his/ her body much more than a physician. Also understanding the patient as a whole is something I appreciate in a good doctor. When I left nursing I started reading and studying so much more as I had time to do so . The medical industry is a revolving door , most times a patient never gets to leave , they keep returning.
December 21, 2019
A Book Everyone Should Read … Medical care has certainly become more impersonal and seemingly less caring than when I retired as a physician (and changed careers) 35 years ago. Dr. Schwartz’s observations and recommendations are, in almost all respects, excellent and right-on point. Her entire career, as stated, has been in a practice located in New York City, and her analysis may be fairly accurate for medicine practiced in most large metropolitan areas. My own experience has been that medical care in small towns and rural areas remains, for the most part, personal, individualized, and caring. When patients from these areas get referred to specialists in the big city, they often, unfortunately, experience exactly what Dr. Schwartz is talking about. It is depressing to know that medical care in the United States is below the quality found in most other industrialized countries despite spending more on this segment of our economy than anywhere else in the world. I hope we can improve this standing. Although I don’t agree 100 percent with everything said, it is a book everyone in this country should probably read. – David B. Crawley, M.D. – Author of “Steep Turn: A Physician's Journey from Clinic to Cockpit" and "A Mile of String: A Boy's Recollection of His Midwest Childhood."
August 1, 2020
Intriguing book about how to assertively get the healthcare you need and want, and to avoid/refuse things which make things worse - and importantly, how to tell the difference. The book goes into how many patients do not get what they think they are getting when they have a procedure. A must-read for anyone who may become a patient, or have a family member who may become a patient.
May 12, 2024
“The way I saw it, the demise of primary care and the rise in subspecialties were trends that created even more confusion. I foresaw the new focus on technological advances and the rise in specialization— breaking down of people into individual body parts—as a surefire path to at worst life-threatening mistakes, and at best disjointed care.”
This is a very good book, and verifies my own thoughts. The relationship between the FDA, Big Pharma and doctors is frightening. This was published in 2015 and so much has happened since then. I would love to read Dr. Schwartz’s current thoughts and opinions.
“I have the obligation to listen to my own body and—even if it’s contrary to what a doctor may be telling me—the ultimate decision for my own course of care or treatment is entirely my own.”
This is a very good book, and verifies my own thoughts. The relationship between the FDA, Big Pharma and doctors is frightening. This was published in 2015 and so much has happened since then. I would love to read Dr. Schwartz’s current thoughts and opinions.
“I have the obligation to listen to my own body and—even if it’s contrary to what a doctor may be telling me—the ultimate decision for my own course of care or treatment is entirely my own.”
April 20, 2016
I want this woman as my family doctor!!!!
Dr. Schwartz wanted to write this book early in her career, but held off upon mentor advice. Many years later, with more experiences and expertise supporting her original ideas, she's written this compelling book that reveals how we, as patients, need to be more in control of our bodies and the decisions for our health. That we should not blindly follow a doctor's advice, particularly when that doctor is not taking time to recognize us an individual, learning our true medical history, and seeing us as people, not a dollar sign in the system that includes hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies more interested in our money than our health.
Schwartz provides excellent advice in how a doctor or hospital should be acting toward us, and how we we can take responsibility for our health back. I came away with a far better understanding how hospitals can treat doctors that leaves them frustrated, and when we should be asking for second opinions.
A must read for anyone who wants to be in charge of their health, rather than owning a disease.
This book deserves 10 stars for the honest way the curtain is pulled back, revealing the truths of a broken system and the handlers manipulating us from behind that curtain.
Dr. Schwartz wanted to write this book early in her career, but held off upon mentor advice. Many years later, with more experiences and expertise supporting her original ideas, she's written this compelling book that reveals how we, as patients, need to be more in control of our bodies and the decisions for our health. That we should not blindly follow a doctor's advice, particularly when that doctor is not taking time to recognize us an individual, learning our true medical history, and seeing us as people, not a dollar sign in the system that includes hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies more interested in our money than our health.
Schwartz provides excellent advice in how a doctor or hospital should be acting toward us, and how we we can take responsibility for our health back. I came away with a far better understanding how hospitals can treat doctors that leaves them frustrated, and when we should be asking for second opinions.
A must read for anyone who wants to be in charge of their health, rather than owning a disease.
This book deserves 10 stars for the honest way the curtain is pulled back, revealing the truths of a broken system and the handlers manipulating us from behind that curtain.
November 29, 2015
Insightful, honest easy read explaining the truth about our healthcare system and how to avoid becoming a statistic. Kudos Dr Schwartz!!
April 26, 2016
Great eye opener
This book is great and scary too. Thank you for this. We should not be victims of our Doctors. It is sad 100k die from doctors a year.
This book is great and scary too. Thank you for this. We should not be victims of our Doctors. It is sad 100k die from doctors a year.
March 9, 2018
The book was very interesting and informative. The concepts are the same as those of CODA ( co-dependents anonymous). The book could have been written more gender neutral.
September 21, 2022
Handwashing is the single most effective defense against infection.
The acute phases of the disease may be triggered by stress, dietary abuse, sedentary lifestyle, or sleep disorders.
The Institute of Medicine estimates that as many as 100,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors in hospitals.
The dehumanized and disease-centered healthcare system we have today continues to thrive largely because of the way physicians are trained. After four years of medical school and a few more years of postgraduate training and brainwashing, the newly minted doctor has sadly become a dehumanized version of his/her original self, without even realizing what happened.
Enforced sleep deprivation, a reality for doctors in training since the profession began, is a core technique in brainwashing. It leaves an individual without the capacity to question authority or
even think on his/her own. For the medical establishment, this produces an easily moldable intern and resident who accepts all information fed to him/her as fact.
Another common brainwashing technique involves humiliation before one’s peers, which has the multiple outcomes of intimidating the subject, destroying their self- confidence, and terrifying the rest of the group into full compliance. Attending physicians, who often have Godlike status in teaching hospitals, habitually berate interns and residents publically, leaving them too frightened to dare have a diverging opinion or to question the status quo.
Another feature of coercive groups and cults is something called “milieu control,” which is similar to what an abusive husband does when he gradually isolates his wife from her support system of friends and family. The mandatory eighty- to one hundred-hour work week required by medical education forces students to basically give up their nonmedical schoolrelated activities and devote their lives pretty exclusively to their training. Friends, family, and hobbies are all moved to the back burner during medical school and postgraduate years.
Thus doctors emerge from medical school brainwashed and blindly following the authoritarian indoctrination they endured for four years. They are left with skewed perspectives on the doctor-patient relationship, blind trust in the educational process, and fear of questioning the status quo.
Medicine is more like a physically abusive relationship between a parent and child. The child hates the abuse growing up, but ends up being an abusive parent themselves. (Threepeas 03.30.06 – The Student Doctor Network)
People die in hospitals because they stop breathing. Unfortunately, this happens fairly commonly. It’s called “respiratory arrest,” and guess what usually causes that? Too high dosing of narcotic painkillers.
Hospitals and doctors have their code of silence.
Even the best doctors are institutionalized by the system.
People who don’t speak up are more likely to become statistics.
“Today’s medicine is at the end of its road. It can no longer be transformed, modified , readjusted. That’s been tried too often. Today’s medicine must DIE in order to be reborn. We must prepare its complete renovation.”
— Maurice Delort
The acute phases of the disease may be triggered by stress, dietary abuse, sedentary lifestyle, or sleep disorders.
The Institute of Medicine estimates that as many as 100,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors in hospitals.
The dehumanized and disease-centered healthcare system we have today continues to thrive largely because of the way physicians are trained. After four years of medical school and a few more years of postgraduate training and brainwashing, the newly minted doctor has sadly become a dehumanized version of his/her original self, without even realizing what happened.
Enforced sleep deprivation, a reality for doctors in training since the profession began, is a core technique in brainwashing. It leaves an individual without the capacity to question authority or
even think on his/her own. For the medical establishment, this produces an easily moldable intern and resident who accepts all information fed to him/her as fact.
Another common brainwashing technique involves humiliation before one’s peers, which has the multiple outcomes of intimidating the subject, destroying their self- confidence, and terrifying the rest of the group into full compliance. Attending physicians, who often have Godlike status in teaching hospitals, habitually berate interns and residents publically, leaving them too frightened to dare have a diverging opinion or to question the status quo.
Another feature of coercive groups and cults is something called “milieu control,” which is similar to what an abusive husband does when he gradually isolates his wife from her support system of friends and family. The mandatory eighty- to one hundred-hour work week required by medical education forces students to basically give up their nonmedical schoolrelated activities and devote their lives pretty exclusively to their training. Friends, family, and hobbies are all moved to the back burner during medical school and postgraduate years.
Thus doctors emerge from medical school brainwashed and blindly following the authoritarian indoctrination they endured for four years. They are left with skewed perspectives on the doctor-patient relationship, blind trust in the educational process, and fear of questioning the status quo.
Medicine is more like a physically abusive relationship between a parent and child. The child hates the abuse growing up, but ends up being an abusive parent themselves. (Threepeas 03.30.06 – The Student Doctor Network)
People die in hospitals because they stop breathing. Unfortunately, this happens fairly commonly. It’s called “respiratory arrest,” and guess what usually causes that? Too high dosing of narcotic painkillers.
Hospitals and doctors have their code of silence.
Even the best doctors are institutionalized by the system.
People who don’t speak up are more likely to become statistics.
“Today’s medicine is at the end of its road. It can no longer be transformed, modified , readjusted. That’s been tried too often. Today’s medicine must DIE in order to be reborn. We must prepare its complete renovation.”
— Maurice Delort
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 15, 2024
Dr. Schwartz is a rational, logical and compassionate physician who does not believe in overdoing things when it comes to medicines and testing. Her approach to treatment is to listen and get to know her patient much like the doctors of our youth who actually came to the house and got to know our family and became pretty much like a friend. Her “diagnosis” of the problems within the medical community are spot on. Legal action has sometimes made doctors fearful of not doing everything they can by prescribing medicines and doing as much testing as possible. But it is vital to keep in mind that there can be much stress, cost and danger in overdoing testing and almost all medicines have side effects. There has to be a safe, sane middle ground and Dr. Schwartz is definitely on the right track. This book is a gift from a doctor to a patient and should be used as a guide to selecting a doctor and determining what you will agree to have done and what you won’t. Because ultimately it is your body.
May 4, 2019
It's a good book for people who are convinced that the medical profession and industry are only there to "help" and that they are well taken care of if they have good insurance and/or if they get lots of tests. This doctor makes a good case for why that's not true and that being a "good" patient isn't necessarily a good thing. It's more of a warning type of book and provides some guidelines on what questions to ask and how to feel empowered. I'm embarking on research to help my adult daughter who is getting more and more sick with each prescription she's given. In addition, she's getting treated poorly by doctors that don't know what is wrong or how to help her.
April 16, 2023
It took me a long time to finish this book. The stories made me hurt and caused me remember incidents involving friends, family and myself with the medical community--like the doctor who prescribed meds for my torn meniscus when it required surgery. I would have to put the book away until I could stomach more. It IS a worthwhile read, and I have been passing the title onto everyone I know who has any kind of medical issue.
December 5, 2015
Excellent Book For Any Patient Who is Proactive about Health Care
I have systemic lupus and I wish this book were written twenty year ago. It emphasizes working with your physician and making the right choices for yourself and not being afraid to get a second (or third) opinion and perspective. Making the right healthy choices for yourself daily and having a kind and invested Doctor/Surgeon is your ideal circumstances. If you are lucky enough to have good insurance, get the doctor you are comfortable with, not one who takes little or no time with your case. This book outlines both your responsibilities as a patient and what to expect from the person who is treating you. Highly recommend to anyone who has struggled with finding the right physician or has major health decisions to make.
I have systemic lupus and I wish this book were written twenty year ago. It emphasizes working with your physician and making the right choices for yourself and not being afraid to get a second (or third) opinion and perspective. Making the right healthy choices for yourself daily and having a kind and invested Doctor/Surgeon is your ideal circumstances. If you are lucky enough to have good insurance, get the doctor you are comfortable with, not one who takes little or no time with your case. This book outlines both your responsibilities as a patient and what to expect from the person who is treating you. Highly recommend to anyone who has struggled with finding the right physician or has major health decisions to make.
August 9, 2016
There was a lot of great info in this book. Two things, though:
1.) It critiques our fear-based medical culture, while instilling in us a different kind of fear, and I felt weird about that.
2.) It's more helpful for people, like me, who haven't been over-tested and over-medicated and gotten stuck in the web of the system, than it is for people with chronic illness who are already waist deep in being reliant on the system and feeling stuck in it, like my Ma, who is the reason I read this in the first place.
So that's the main thing. This has lots of valuable information, but will be frustrating for readers who are maybe hoping to find answers to actually help them get out of the mess they've gotten in in the medical world, and who have chronic illnesses they are reliant on treatment for.
1.) It critiques our fear-based medical culture, while instilling in us a different kind of fear, and I felt weird about that.
2.) It's more helpful for people, like me, who haven't been over-tested and over-medicated and gotten stuck in the web of the system, than it is for people with chronic illness who are already waist deep in being reliant on the system and feeling stuck in it, like my Ma, who is the reason I read this in the first place.
So that's the main thing. This has lots of valuable information, but will be frustrating for readers who are maybe hoping to find answers to actually help them get out of the mess they've gotten in in the medical world, and who have chronic illnesses they are reliant on treatment for.
December 9, 2016
I read this book to support my interest after reading Murder by Injection. Half way reading it, I was offered this one by Dr Erika. (If only all doctors are open minded & speak the truth out from their mouths )This book strengthened my belief that children with autism and ADHD can be cured without pharmaceutical pills. Pharmaceutical creates customers not cures. 1)Fluoride, Mercury in the Flu Shot, auto immune vaccines, what else will be offered? 2)If Vaccine are safe, why did Congress pass the The National Injuries Act of 1986 3)You can decide to vaccinate/chemo at any time but we can never decide to un-vaccinate/un-chemo" 4)Vaccines are the backbone of entire Pharmaceutical business. Vaccinated children became customer for life.
July 21, 2016
A scary look at many things wrong with the medical practices today including the reasons many doctors order the tests they do and some questionable decisions they commonly make as a profession trying to succeed in a messed up system . However, the author doesn't do what she promised in the book's title. She doesn't offer much in the way of substantive advice for patients who want to avoid these things happening to them. Disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews