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Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing
A radical new understanding of how medicine is best practiced, by the award-winning author of God's Hotel
Over the years that Victoria Sweet has been a physician, “healthcare” has replaced medicine, “providers” look at their laptops more than at their patients, and costs keep soaring, all in the ruthless pursuit of efficiency. Yet the remedy that economists and policymakers continue to miss is also miraculously simple. Good medicine takes more than amazing technology; it takes time—time to respond to bodies as well as data, time to arrive at the right diagnosis and the right treatment.
Sweet knows this because she has learned and lived it over the course of her remarkable career. Here she relates unforgettable stories of the teachers, doctors, nurses, and patients through whom she discovered the practice of Slow Medicine, in which she has been both pioneer and inspiration. Medicine, she helps us to see, is a craft and an art as well as a science. It is relational, personal, even spiritual. To do it well requires a hard-won wisdom that no algorithm can replace—that brings together “fast” and “slow” in a truly effective, efficient, sustainable, and humane way of healing.
Over the years that Victoria Sweet has been a physician, “healthcare” has replaced medicine, “providers” look at their laptops more than at their patients, and costs keep soaring, all in the ruthless pursuit of efficiency. Yet the remedy that economists and policymakers continue to miss is also miraculously simple. Good medicine takes more than amazing technology; it takes time—time to respond to bodies as well as data, time to arrive at the right diagnosis and the right treatment.
Sweet knows this because she has learned and lived it over the course of her remarkable career. Here she relates unforgettable stories of the teachers, doctors, nurses, and patients through whom she discovered the practice of Slow Medicine, in which she has been both pioneer and inspiration. Medicine, she helps us to see, is a craft and an art as well as a science. It is relational, personal, even spiritual. To do it well requires a hard-won wisdom that no algorithm can replace—that brings together “fast” and “slow” in a truly effective, efficient, sustainable, and humane way of healing.
289 pages, Hardcover
Published October 24, 2017
176 people are currently reading
2315 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews
October 15, 2017
I was a Goodreads winner of this book. I have been a healthcare advocate for over 20 years now and I like the author's views on medicine and health which I share, just take the time to know your patients and treat them like human beings. I see the same issues and problems in healthcare too. There is never enough staff for the people who are doing the hands-on care but there is always room for more and more administrative people, somehow those people always get their money and the jobs while we take the cutbacks. A very informative and interesting book with lots of case studies throughout the author's life in the healthcare industry. This book is a worthwhile read.
March 27, 2018
"Medicine is not only a craft and a science, but an art. It had something unexplainable about it, which was its heart."
***
In an era in which modern medicine is dominated by doctors typing on their laptops instead of listening to and examining their patients, this book is timely, relevant, and extraordinarily insightful. Victoria Sweet's experience is not only invaluable in making the argument that doctors should return to the traditional practice of medicine; she argues that medicine is just as much an art as it is a science. Over the past several years, this art -- the intangible, qualitative components of good medicine -- has been lost. Dr. Sweet's book reminds us all that we must fight to get it back.
'Slow Medicine' is a beautifully written, thoughtfully developed memoir in which Victoria Sweet reflects on decades of experience to identify a problem that is now endemic to modern medicine: Doctors don't listen. They don't lay hands on their patients. They treat lab work and not people. And they don't assess the whole picture -- family history, genetic predispositions, environmental factors -- that may contribute to a patient's sickness. "What Father had gotten was not medicine, but health care: medicine without a soul," she writes. "What do I mean by 'soul?' I mean what he did not get: presence, attention, judgment, kindness. Above all, responsibility. No one took responsibility for the story. The essence of medicine is story. Finding the right story, understanding the true story, being unsatisfied with a story that does not make sense. Health care, on the other hand, deconstructs story into thousands of tiny pieces, pages of boxes and checkmarks for which no one is responsible. A robot doctor could've cared for my father just as well."
In neglecting some of the most fundamental elements of medicine in favor of practicing "health care," today's doctors overlook some of the most basic factors affecting a patient's illness. Sweet points out that while 17.5 percent of America's GDP is spent on health, sickness, and disease, modern medicine isn't actually providing more efficacious care. She tells the story of a 12-year old girl, Marcela, whose benign kidney tumor took many days, multiple doctors, and numerous lab tests to diagnose. But her actual diagnosis -- a terrible one, indeed -- was neurofibromatosis ("Elephant Man's Disease"), which the hospital team learned as soon as they saw it on her mother's face. Sweet writes, "This is the pitfall of fast medicine. That one look at an actual person should've sufficed for an actual diagnosis tickled my sense of irony, but it was also a warning: don't miss the obvious. The best doctor was the best diagnostician."
Sweet not only cites these memorable examples; she reflects on what she has learned from them. "I got one more insight from Marcela: there is a whole piece of my patient I'll never know," she writes. "Surrounding each is a kind of clearing, inside of which is invisible -- all these experiences, genetics, environment, their whole life, their families' lives, passed down and through them, appearing on their mother's face, though not visible on their own, but autosomal nonetheless. My biggest strength would be to recognize that whatever I saw was only a part. So whenever something didn't make sense, didn't fit, that was important. Because somehow, with one more piece of data, it would make sense."
She tells the story of 3-year of Joey, who drove his tricycle into a pool and was in the ICU for three months, unable to be removed from the ventilator because of the scar tissue covering his lungs. The doctors recommended a DNR, giving up on the idea that he could be saved. When another doctor intervened -- realizing that the ventilator simply needed less pressure -- Joey miraculously survived. "By Christmas, Joey was riding his tricycle and was interviewed by the local paper." Sweet writes, "Joey was the moment I became convinced that modern medicine, technological medicine, fast medicine, was amazing, but it wasn't always enough -- that despite its power, it wasn't always right. Joey hinted that there was more to healing than technology. Medicine almost failed him, not in spite of, but because of its own rationality."
We learn about 72-year old Ed Schumer, who came to her with complaints of chest pain. His vitals were all normal, his EKG was normal, his lungs sounded fine, and the chest pain didn't get worse when he lay down or took a deep breath. After the ER erroneously sent him him with a bronchitis diagnosis, Dr. Sweet saw him the next day, only to discover a 5-inch pulsating mass across his abdomen that had not been there the day before. Her alarming discovery of an abdominal aneurism forced her to send him back to the ER. But they sent him home -- again -- with antibiotics for the treatment of bronchitis. It took another physician to go to Mr. Schumer's house and drive him to the county hospital before his aneurism exploded and he was rushed into emergency surgery to remove it. "It wasn't enough to diagnose a disease and prescribe the right treatment. That was just being a good doctor. Or even to walk with the patient to the ER. That was just being a better doctor. Cathy showed me that the best doctor gets the patient the right treatment by force if necessary."
Sweet goes on to write about many other memorable cases -- of Nurse David, who had AIDS but was misdiagnosed with pneumonia; of Mrs. Mathers, whose sky-high ammonia levels were indicative of liver failure but she still wasn't yellow; and of Mr. Nicks, for whom she was confident Narcan would work even though he likely hadn't had an overdose and it wasn't part of the Code Blue protocol. These experiences all taught her the importance of slow medicine.
"For me, slow medicine meant and means a way of understanding the medicine I've seen, learned, and grown to love," she writes. "It signifies a way -- a way of seeing, doing, and being. It is a way of seeing, stepping back and seeing a patient in the context of his environment, and asking, 'What is in the way of the patient's own healing?' And then removing what's in the way. It is a way of doing, which is slow, methodical, and step by step. And it is a way of being -- that does not reject seeing the patient as a machine and being a good mechanic ... nor does it reject the tools of the fantastic medical progress I have witnessed. Rather, it is a way that incorporates slow and fast medicine that sees these two ways as tools ... it is a solid way, built on excellence, method, knowledge, and experience -- but also on the personal, the individual."
I love this book and recommend it to anyone who cares about the future of American medicine. It is a reminder that the efficacy of modern medicine is dependent on a physician's willingness to listen, examine, ask the right questions, and continue to seek answers when something doesn't make sense. It's time to restore heart to the practice of medicine. 4.5 stars for this insightful and informative memoir.
***
In an era in which modern medicine is dominated by doctors typing on their laptops instead of listening to and examining their patients, this book is timely, relevant, and extraordinarily insightful. Victoria Sweet's experience is not only invaluable in making the argument that doctors should return to the traditional practice of medicine; she argues that medicine is just as much an art as it is a science. Over the past several years, this art -- the intangible, qualitative components of good medicine -- has been lost. Dr. Sweet's book reminds us all that we must fight to get it back.
'Slow Medicine' is a beautifully written, thoughtfully developed memoir in which Victoria Sweet reflects on decades of experience to identify a problem that is now endemic to modern medicine: Doctors don't listen. They don't lay hands on their patients. They treat lab work and not people. And they don't assess the whole picture -- family history, genetic predispositions, environmental factors -- that may contribute to a patient's sickness. "What Father had gotten was not medicine, but health care: medicine without a soul," she writes. "What do I mean by 'soul?' I mean what he did not get: presence, attention, judgment, kindness. Above all, responsibility. No one took responsibility for the story. The essence of medicine is story. Finding the right story, understanding the true story, being unsatisfied with a story that does not make sense. Health care, on the other hand, deconstructs story into thousands of tiny pieces, pages of boxes and checkmarks for which no one is responsible. A robot doctor could've cared for my father just as well."
In neglecting some of the most fundamental elements of medicine in favor of practicing "health care," today's doctors overlook some of the most basic factors affecting a patient's illness. Sweet points out that while 17.5 percent of America's GDP is spent on health, sickness, and disease, modern medicine isn't actually providing more efficacious care. She tells the story of a 12-year old girl, Marcela, whose benign kidney tumor took many days, multiple doctors, and numerous lab tests to diagnose. But her actual diagnosis -- a terrible one, indeed -- was neurofibromatosis ("Elephant Man's Disease"), which the hospital team learned as soon as they saw it on her mother's face. Sweet writes, "This is the pitfall of fast medicine. That one look at an actual person should've sufficed for an actual diagnosis tickled my sense of irony, but it was also a warning: don't miss the obvious. The best doctor was the best diagnostician."
Sweet not only cites these memorable examples; she reflects on what she has learned from them. "I got one more insight from Marcela: there is a whole piece of my patient I'll never know," she writes. "Surrounding each is a kind of clearing, inside of which is invisible -- all these experiences, genetics, environment, their whole life, their families' lives, passed down and through them, appearing on their mother's face, though not visible on their own, but autosomal nonetheless. My biggest strength would be to recognize that whatever I saw was only a part. So whenever something didn't make sense, didn't fit, that was important. Because somehow, with one more piece of data, it would make sense."
She tells the story of 3-year of Joey, who drove his tricycle into a pool and was in the ICU for three months, unable to be removed from the ventilator because of the scar tissue covering his lungs. The doctors recommended a DNR, giving up on the idea that he could be saved. When another doctor intervened -- realizing that the ventilator simply needed less pressure -- Joey miraculously survived. "By Christmas, Joey was riding his tricycle and was interviewed by the local paper." Sweet writes, "Joey was the moment I became convinced that modern medicine, technological medicine, fast medicine, was amazing, but it wasn't always enough -- that despite its power, it wasn't always right. Joey hinted that there was more to healing than technology. Medicine almost failed him, not in spite of, but because of its own rationality."
We learn about 72-year old Ed Schumer, who came to her with complaints of chest pain. His vitals were all normal, his EKG was normal, his lungs sounded fine, and the chest pain didn't get worse when he lay down or took a deep breath. After the ER erroneously sent him him with a bronchitis diagnosis, Dr. Sweet saw him the next day, only to discover a 5-inch pulsating mass across his abdomen that had not been there the day before. Her alarming discovery of an abdominal aneurism forced her to send him back to the ER. But they sent him home -- again -- with antibiotics for the treatment of bronchitis. It took another physician to go to Mr. Schumer's house and drive him to the county hospital before his aneurism exploded and he was rushed into emergency surgery to remove it. "It wasn't enough to diagnose a disease and prescribe the right treatment. That was just being a good doctor. Or even to walk with the patient to the ER. That was just being a better doctor. Cathy showed me that the best doctor gets the patient the right treatment by force if necessary."
Sweet goes on to write about many other memorable cases -- of Nurse David, who had AIDS but was misdiagnosed with pneumonia; of Mrs. Mathers, whose sky-high ammonia levels were indicative of liver failure but she still wasn't yellow; and of Mr. Nicks, for whom she was confident Narcan would work even though he likely hadn't had an overdose and it wasn't part of the Code Blue protocol. These experiences all taught her the importance of slow medicine.
"For me, slow medicine meant and means a way of understanding the medicine I've seen, learned, and grown to love," she writes. "It signifies a way -- a way of seeing, doing, and being. It is a way of seeing, stepping back and seeing a patient in the context of his environment, and asking, 'What is in the way of the patient's own healing?' And then removing what's in the way. It is a way of doing, which is slow, methodical, and step by step. And it is a way of being -- that does not reject seeing the patient as a machine and being a good mechanic ... nor does it reject the tools of the fantastic medical progress I have witnessed. Rather, it is a way that incorporates slow and fast medicine that sees these two ways as tools ... it is a solid way, built on excellence, method, knowledge, and experience -- but also on the personal, the individual."
I love this book and recommend it to anyone who cares about the future of American medicine. It is a reminder that the efficacy of modern medicine is dependent on a physician's willingness to listen, examine, ask the right questions, and continue to seek answers when something doesn't make sense. It's time to restore heart to the practice of medicine. 4.5 stars for this insightful and informative memoir.
June 29, 2019
This book is like a memoir of how the author got to the point of writing "God's Hotel." Given that, and its focus on medical education (a few decades ago) I think this has a narrower audience. Nevertheless, the prose is still beautiful and the insights important. Slow Medicine vs. Fast Medicine is not either/or, but overall we have thrown the Slow baby out with the bath water and so balance requires emphasizing the Slow. Unfortunately, as she illustrates with her anecdotes of the present, that seems harder than ever to implement. I agree with her that we need a Slow Medicine Movement, and I hope the next book can talk about its preliminary successes.
March 12, 2018
I loved her previous book, God's Hotel, exploring the care of the most vulnerable in a dying breed of hospital. Intelligent, erudite, insightful, and deeply humane, Sweet tells a slightly more personal story this time, how she came to medicine, how she learned it, and the serious moral, intellectual, ethical and spiritual question her career path led her to investigate. I will confess, my heart sank when she revealed her profound admiration for Carl Jung, the Nazi-sympathizing, dishonest, creative and utterly flaky developer of the pernicious personality theories that have tainted Human Resource Departments everywhere with the likes of Myers-Briggs and its bastard offspring "Total Insights," dumbed down to the point where you don't even get to use words for the types, only colors. But I digress.
I still liked this book a lot. She opens with the harrowing and unconscionable mistreatment of her elderly father, subjected by the hospital to days of inappropriate and even dangerous treatments for a condition he did not have, that his attending-physician-of-the-day knew he did not have, and yet was unable to change the diagnosis in that new Bible of medicine, the electronic medical record. Only by pretending his family was removing him for hospice care (God love the hospice folks, who supported them) were they able to get him out of there, feed him and allow him to recover. Sweet muses on the intersection of, conflict between, and potential synergy of "fast" (high-tech, multiple-labs, treat-every-single-thing-that-shows-up-no-matter-what) medicine, and a "slow" medicine, led by relationships, caution, setting priorities, and looking at the patient as a complex living organism in their own unique environmental "niche." She considers and applies elements of other models of medicine: Chinese traditional, Ayurvedic, and that of the medieval nun Hildegard of Bingen, to add value and alternatives to the mechanistic clinical basis of modern medicine. She ponders on what being a doctor does to a person, what sort of doctor she herself has become, and how she got there. And - most worryingly - her picture of the future of American medicine is a bleak one indeed: corporate, money-focused, treatment decisions being made by "quality managers" and other "Upstairs" types who write themselves 15% raises while refusing a raise above minimum wage for the medical assistants downstairs for years on end.
If there were more Victoria Sweets, I would be less fearful. Her portraits of patients are humane, dignified, and warm, and she seems truly grateful to them for all she has learned from them. Ironically, staff at the hospital who treated her father so badly had read her earlier book in their book club; she had presented to them at the invitation of the medical staff. Apparently, not much of what she said made it into a checkbox on the EMR, and languished unheeded. A cautionary tale.
I still liked this book a lot. She opens with the harrowing and unconscionable mistreatment of her elderly father, subjected by the hospital to days of inappropriate and even dangerous treatments for a condition he did not have, that his attending-physician-of-the-day knew he did not have, and yet was unable to change the diagnosis in that new Bible of medicine, the electronic medical record. Only by pretending his family was removing him for hospice care (God love the hospice folks, who supported them) were they able to get him out of there, feed him and allow him to recover. Sweet muses on the intersection of, conflict between, and potential synergy of "fast" (high-tech, multiple-labs, treat-every-single-thing-that-shows-up-no-matter-what) medicine, and a "slow" medicine, led by relationships, caution, setting priorities, and looking at the patient as a complex living organism in their own unique environmental "niche." She considers and applies elements of other models of medicine: Chinese traditional, Ayurvedic, and that of the medieval nun Hildegard of Bingen, to add value and alternatives to the mechanistic clinical basis of modern medicine. She ponders on what being a doctor does to a person, what sort of doctor she herself has become, and how she got there. And - most worryingly - her picture of the future of American medicine is a bleak one indeed: corporate, money-focused, treatment decisions being made by "quality managers" and other "Upstairs" types who write themselves 15% raises while refusing a raise above minimum wage for the medical assistants downstairs for years on end.
If there were more Victoria Sweets, I would be less fearful. Her portraits of patients are humane, dignified, and warm, and she seems truly grateful to them for all she has learned from them. Ironically, staff at the hospital who treated her father so badly had read her earlier book in their book club; she had presented to them at the invitation of the medical staff. Apparently, not much of what she said made it into a checkbox on the EMR, and languished unheeded. A cautionary tale.
November 7, 2017
Brilliant and subversive. A memoir that also shows how medicine was, what it has become, and what it might be...
January 18, 2025
Whoooooole lot of EHR slander which I can get, but still :(
Really interesting stories & information about practicing medicine and Dr. Sweet’s specific philosophy but often trips over its own writing when it doesn’t leave well enough alone, specifically around the philosophy of capital-M Medicine parts
Realistically a 3.5 but GoodReads is too dumb for that
Really interesting stories & information about practicing medicine and Dr. Sweet’s specific philosophy but often trips over its own writing when it doesn’t leave well enough alone, specifically around the philosophy of capital-M Medicine parts
Realistically a 3.5 but GoodReads is too dumb for that
August 14, 2019
Wonderfully written. Just like Extreme Measures, Being Mortal and When Breath Becomes Air, there were plenty of “amen” moments. It reads a lot like a memoir, and her life stories in old-school medicine were really interesting. But I feel like I still want more particulars and details about how it’s even possible to practice Slow Medicine in a world where medicine has become healthcare. Seems impossible in America. And it clearly was for her—she just stopped practicing.
November 11, 2017
While this book turned out to be more autobiographical than I anticipated, Dr. Sweet's storytelling kept me turning the pages. Like other professions, medicine has been captured by the tyranny of metrics, making what is easily measured important. Her book is an important lesson in taking a step back and realizing that modern management with all its measurement tools is not omnipotent.
December 17, 2017
I so appreciated Sweet's first book, "God's Hotel," and was really looking forward to "Slow Medicine." While I didn't know it, I think I was looking for answers, for a way to incorporate real and tangible plans using the sensibilities of slow medicine.
This is a good book about a good doctor (and I wish she were mine!) but it's more memoir than action plan.
This is a good book about a good doctor (and I wish she were mine!) but it's more memoir than action plan.
March 18, 2018
I liked this book almost as much as Sweet's absolutely wonderful "God's Hotel". She covers some of the same ground here, again weaving her amazing life experiences, as a clearly brilliant physician, with her thoughts on where medicine has been and where it must go. Her books should be required reading for everyone in health care- perhaps particularly administrators.
May 28, 2024
I’ve read countless books about medicine in general and nursing in particular (with a long trek into book about death and dying). Nothing compares to the wisdom here. Stunning!
March 6, 2018
Fabulous book! Wow, Vicoria Sweet has lead a very eventful life in the world of medicine. I found it interesting that she orginally wanted to be Jungian psyschologist. It wasn't until after medical school that she would finally decide that she liked be a medical doctor. It shows that people take many different life paths to get to their "thing".
The book is incredibly well written and filled with short stories of her with her patients, doctors, and teachers. These real life moments with her patients brings her message to life. The message is how to bring the way of Slow, the way of compassion and observation and noticing back into the health care "system" which has deviated so far into the realm of technology and structured protocl. Sweet creates a new paradigm that honors what Western medicine has learn and taught through deconstructing the body and adopting a doctor as the mechanic mindset, while finding her way back to traditional roots of the doctor as a gardner - allowing the patient to grow and healing on their own add a touch of this and a dash of that - filled with love.
She also briefly gets into the gender dynamics of what it has meant and still means to be a female doctor. A profession once off limits to women and still with its handicaps. Dr. Sweet earns her reputation as a well credentialed doctor.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is the Allied Health field. This integration of west and east is where health care is going and needs to go. Far too often the is a rejection of Western medicine from holistic practioners and a superiority coming from Western doctors. Dialogue and meaningful interaction and acceptance of the strengths and weakness of all sides of the conservation are vital to the improvement of the system overall, which is to stay to the life, health and well-being of our society.
The book is incredibly well written and filled with short stories of her with her patients, doctors, and teachers. These real life moments with her patients brings her message to life. The message is how to bring the way of Slow, the way of compassion and observation and noticing back into the health care "system" which has deviated so far into the realm of technology and structured protocl. Sweet creates a new paradigm that honors what Western medicine has learn and taught through deconstructing the body and adopting a doctor as the mechanic mindset, while finding her way back to traditional roots of the doctor as a gardner - allowing the patient to grow and healing on their own add a touch of this and a dash of that - filled with love.
She also briefly gets into the gender dynamics of what it has meant and still means to be a female doctor. A profession once off limits to women and still with its handicaps. Dr. Sweet earns her reputation as a well credentialed doctor.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is the Allied Health field. This integration of west and east is where health care is going and needs to go. Far too often the is a rejection of Western medicine from holistic practioners and a superiority coming from Western doctors. Dialogue and meaningful interaction and acceptance of the strengths and weakness of all sides of the conservation are vital to the improvement of the system overall, which is to stay to the life, health and well-being of our society.
January 16, 2020
I’m ever-appreciative of books that remind readers that medicine is a marriage between art and science. And that reminds me that my practice of medicine still has validity in the electronic medical record era. This book, in one sense, states the obvious: patients are people who need touch and human care while also requiring judicious use of Fast Medicine — the interventions medical science offers. Computers get in the way of that, or, perhaps more precisely, required tasks (required by systems who see patients as numbers — dollars and hours spent) get in the way of that.
As a PA with 26 years of experience who looks uncertainly at the future of a profession that I love, at least when I can do it with a Slow/Fast balance, what might have touched me most deeply was her movement through jobs. She looked carefully at positions. She moved on when they weren’t the right fit. She found her own way when she needed to step back. Sweet’s own path helped me accept my own path. I needed that.
As a PA with 26 years of experience who looks uncertainly at the future of a profession that I love, at least when I can do it with a Slow/Fast balance, what might have touched me most deeply was her movement through jobs. She looked carefully at positions. She moved on when they weren’t the right fit. She found her own way when she needed to step back. Sweet’s own path helped me accept my own path. I needed that.
December 8, 2024
"(...) enandiotropia (...) translates as the "running of the opposites", and the idea is that whatever is too extreme flips into its opposite; there is a basic balancing function in the mind, a compensatory function. We see this all the time: The violent homophobe turns gay; the atheist becomes a religious zealot. I understand this natural balance, this pendulum, as demostrating that inside every extreme is a kernel of its own opposite: inside every liberal is a conservative; inside every conservative is a liberal"
November 29, 2018
A very interesting memoir of a career in Medicine. Victoria Sweet was always looking for a path that kept her focused on the patient, their environment, and the strength of the body to heal itself. Along the way, she used traditional modern medicine, various homeopathic approaches, and the teachings of Hildegard of Bingen. Fascinating!
July 14, 2025
this book really made me think. I like the way the author doesn’t advocate for slow medicine over fast, or fast and be blind to slow. there is value in both and the best care we can provide sees when each is necessary.
April 3, 2020
Incredible.
September 7, 2021
Heartening and intelligent story of author Victoria Sweet's medical school experience followed by her years of practice and observation as a young physician. In Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing, Dr. Sweet makes a brilliant case for another kind of medicine, one with heart and soul, both old fashioned and progressive, where the relationship with the patient as a suffering human in need of care is present and held.
March 29, 2021
Mi-a plăcut mult prima parte, apoi a început să scadă interesul, pentru că Victoria povestește despre anii ei la medicină, cazurile pe care le-a întâlnit, specializările prin care a trecut și evoluția ei ca medic. Pentru un student la medicină, cartea ar putea fi o comoară, dar mie mi s-a părut că a avut prea mulți termeni din domeniul medical, că s-a pierdut în detalii și, cel mai important, că nu a ajuns cu mesajul la un om simplu. Mă așteptam la niște principii, sfaturi și idei de subliniat și reținut, dar am simțit că citesc o biografie.
December 28, 2018
I do love reading Victoria Sweet; her style is gentle and direct. Every one of the stories of how Sweet became the doctor she is was insightful, humble, and amazing. Yet the book overall seemed mostly a rehashing of what she had already said in _God's Hotel_.
She does have perceptive and insightful things to say, as always, about the doctor-patient relationship. Of an older Austrian woman, tough, who insists on making a difficult trip to the clinic for a minor scrape to her knee: "Why did you come in?"
"I knew it would feel better if you touched it."
"Does it?"
"Yes, it does. It's fine. Thank you."
"But as I went about the rest of the day, Hedda stayed in my mind. she was strong, she was tough, and she was nobody's fool. She was proud of her strength and her toughness, and yet she had made the trip just so I would touch her knee. It would feel better if I did, and it did feel better.
"What was that about?
"I remembered Dr. Fong and his 'Victoria, these hands!' and Mr. Danska and those dozen roses. I thought about the strange deep relationship between doctor and patient. Of what I got from my patients, of what they got from me. That was not ever talked about, neither its diagnostic usefulness nor its therapeutic meaningfulness. And yet it was as if underneath the modern model of the body I had been taught there was something, some other kind of body, with a less defined boundary, a body in which we all participate, a body of energies and connections, of invisible causes with visible effects" (222).
She does have perceptive and insightful things to say, as always, about the doctor-patient relationship. Of an older Austrian woman, tough, who insists on making a difficult trip to the clinic for a minor scrape to her knee: "Why did you come in?"
"I knew it would feel better if you touched it."
"Does it?"
"Yes, it does. It's fine. Thank you."
"But as I went about the rest of the day, Hedda stayed in my mind. she was strong, she was tough, and she was nobody's fool. She was proud of her strength and her toughness, and yet she had made the trip just so I would touch her knee. It would feel better if I did, and it did feel better.
"What was that about?
"I remembered Dr. Fong and his 'Victoria, these hands!' and Mr. Danska and those dozen roses. I thought about the strange deep relationship between doctor and patient. Of what I got from my patients, of what they got from me. That was not ever talked about, neither its diagnostic usefulness nor its therapeutic meaningfulness. And yet it was as if underneath the modern model of the body I had been taught there was something, some other kind of body, with a less defined boundary, a body in which we all participate, a body of energies and connections, of invisible causes with visible effects" (222).
March 5, 2019
For me, perhaps the most perceptive moment of Dr. Victoria Sweet’s “Slow Medicine” was her definition of fast and slow and how the words, normally applied to food, relate to medicine. I finally got the drift of her book when I understood her adept transference of the terms. Fast, she states, implies modernity, excitement, and efficiency as opposed to slow --- behind the times, lumbering, and inefficient. At first glance, slow seems to be something undesirable.
But years of rush and pressure, of wrong diagnoses, and wrong treatments, have promoted slow as a kind of antidote. Dr. Sweet has determined that correct diagnoses and treatment are the truly effective, efficient, sustainable, and humane ways of healing. Neither fast nor slow correctly defines the final product. But applied together, they are powerful methods of ensuring quality care.
Her enlightening book is filled with case histories about physicians and their care of patients. Her prose is simple and direct. Her warmth and intelligence envelop the reader from the first pages. Her simple message is that medicine should be shaped by calling rather than by economics and by veneration instead of litigation.
Dr. Sweet is a prize-winning historian with a Ph.D. along with her sterling reputation as a medical doctor. Sometimes referred to as subversive and evangelistic, she is dedicated to having fast and slow medicine meld together into a more intelligent and humane system of healing. She strikes me as being the type of physician we all long for but soon find to be elusive.
October 16, 2019
Things picked up and she got to the heart of everything about 30 pages from the end when she started talking about Laguna Honda (clearly her bread and butter).
I felt like her initial examples of slow vs fast medicine were sometimes problematic and it was unclear to me what her true definition of fast vs. slow medicine even was.
This is a very specific critique, but as a nurse, I found her occasional reflections on nursing/nurses she’s worked with to be quite condescending, overly simplistic and a bit out of touch. For example, why couldn’t the ICU nurses ever grasp the carotid massage technique that she seemed to be some sort of mystic master of? This 6th sense “je ne sais quoi” power she apparently possesses, which she seems to be using as an example of “slow medicine at its best”, evades nursing in her story over and over. Therefore, the ICU nurses must represent fast medicine (as the feeding tube fanatic nurse Blake does later on in the story). I world argue that nurses are often the masters of the slow medicine ideology and are frequently in the slow healing/ palliative care camp since we witness the suffering that feeding tubes, restraints, shocks, etc. prolong. I just rolled my eyes several times when she spoke of this patient connection element she had that seemed to set her apart from the rest.
...I am impressed with her resume though.
I felt like her initial examples of slow vs fast medicine were sometimes problematic and it was unclear to me what her true definition of fast vs. slow medicine even was.
This is a very specific critique, but as a nurse, I found her occasional reflections on nursing/nurses she’s worked with to be quite condescending, overly simplistic and a bit out of touch. For example, why couldn’t the ICU nurses ever grasp the carotid massage technique that she seemed to be some sort of mystic master of? This 6th sense “je ne sais quoi” power she apparently possesses, which she seems to be using as an example of “slow medicine at its best”, evades nursing in her story over and over. Therefore, the ICU nurses must represent fast medicine (as the feeding tube fanatic nurse Blake does later on in the story). I world argue that nurses are often the masters of the slow medicine ideology and are frequently in the slow healing/ palliative care camp since we witness the suffering that feeding tubes, restraints, shocks, etc. prolong. I just rolled my eyes several times when she spoke of this patient connection element she had that seemed to set her apart from the rest.
...I am impressed with her resume though.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 21, 2017
"Slow Medicine" is the best non-fiction book I've read in many years. It's also one of the first books I haven't rushed to finish in the final chapters; instead, I savored every page, expecting Dr. Sweet's next transition to lead down another fascinating path of her particular journey through medical school, internships and residencies with a variety of populations and within diverse cultural settings. Her interest and eventual disinterest in psychiatry, then her move toward studying Hildegard, then teaching--all this while spanning a 20 year medical career--inspired and moved me in so many ways. The explanation of Jungian psychology near the beginning of the book was the first evidence of her great teaching skill: the ability to translate and demystify reams of works and even criticism of those works by Freud into simple, unfettered language that I could apply to myself and my world. Another great feature of this book is that it allows the reader to understand, if not grasp the last 25 years of transition from medicine to "healthcare." I can't think of a person, population, or discipline that would not greatly benefit from reading this book. I will read all that she writes and has written!
August 16, 2019
Un 3,5 pentru câteva probleme de traducere care ar fi fost depășite cu ușurință dacă ar fi fost revizuită de cineva cu pregătire medicală. Sunt cuvinte care zgârie urechea unui medic prin neadaptarea la termenii românești (exemplul care îmi vine acum în minte este "drumstick fingers" traduse ca degete în băț de tobă, deși în semiologia românească se folosesc "degete hipocratice"). Titlul de "medicină lentă" îți dă impresia de carte self-help (ceea ce nu este, evident), iar sinonimul "pe îndelete", folosit de câteva ori, mi se pare mai potrivit conceptului autoarei. Per ansamblu, e o carte bine scrisă, mi-a făcut plăcere să o citesc.
January 25, 2018
This is the fascinating history of the author's journey as a physician and the development of her ideas about how taking one's time can be far superior to the computer-driven Fast Medicine approach that is so common today.
November 6, 2017
Captivating
This book was beautiful. In an ever dwindling healthcare system that deprives the patient of face to face time with their doctor, placing emphasis on technology and documentation, this book was a breath of fresh air.
This book was beautiful. In an ever dwindling healthcare system that deprives the patient of face to face time with their doctor, placing emphasis on technology and documentation, this book was a breath of fresh air.
December 12, 2017
she's brilliant. i wanted more of the theory application and language / positioning she offers at the beginning and end and less professional autobiography which filled the middle...but I'll totally read her other work.
September 12, 2020
I bought the book Slow Medicine for someone who requested it as a gift but before I wrapped it I leafed through the book and found myself stopping to read an intriguing account of how the author of the book Dr. Victoria Sweet saved a man's life on a trek through Nepal by pulling a stubborn thorn out of his leg.
I sat down and started the book from the beginning. I was totally drawn in by one interesting story after another about Dr. Sweet's patients. Victoria Sweet is a great believer in modern 'fast medicine' and appreciates the way new medical technologies and treatments save lives. But she wants to make the point that there is also a place for more measured, holistic, thoughtful, and simpler approaches to medicine. She calls it 'slow medicine.'
Victoria basically walks us through her career as a physician in Slow Medicine and introduces us to the fascinating patients who taught her the importance of slow medicine- the value of listening to patients, observing them carefully, getting to know their families, histories, and living situations, and being open to "out of the box" thinking.
For example, she tells the story of a young boy who kept coming in with one ear infection after another. It was only when she visited his farm home and realized he was swimming regularly in a stagnant pond containing animal waste that she understood why the ear infections kept recurring.
In another story, a man had terrible headaches. Victoria took many, many hours to read carefully through the man's mountain of medical records, and eventually, she found a clue in a previous doctor's notes, that helped provide a remedy for the headaches.
I finished reading Slow Medicine in a park. The perfect place to slowly savor its stories.
Slow Medicine makes the point that in a doctor's haste to diagnose and treat he or she may not take the time to try different approaches, to find out about their patient's home environment, to carefully go through their medical history, and to really 'see' their patients and all the factors that might influence their condition.
Victoria Sweet is an excellent writer and her book is NOTHING like a medical textbook. It really is very interesting and engaging. I wasn't planning to read this book but I'm glad I did.
I sat down and started the book from the beginning. I was totally drawn in by one interesting story after another about Dr. Sweet's patients. Victoria Sweet is a great believer in modern 'fast medicine' and appreciates the way new medical technologies and treatments save lives. But she wants to make the point that there is also a place for more measured, holistic, thoughtful, and simpler approaches to medicine. She calls it 'slow medicine.'
Victoria basically walks us through her career as a physician in Slow Medicine and introduces us to the fascinating patients who taught her the importance of slow medicine- the value of listening to patients, observing them carefully, getting to know their families, histories, and living situations, and being open to "out of the box" thinking.
For example, she tells the story of a young boy who kept coming in with one ear infection after another. It was only when she visited his farm home and realized he was swimming regularly in a stagnant pond containing animal waste that she understood why the ear infections kept recurring.
In another story, a man had terrible headaches. Victoria took many, many hours to read carefully through the man's mountain of medical records, and eventually, she found a clue in a previous doctor's notes, that helped provide a remedy for the headaches.
I finished reading Slow Medicine in a park. The perfect place to slowly savor its stories.
Slow Medicine makes the point that in a doctor's haste to diagnose and treat he or she may not take the time to try different approaches, to find out about their patient's home environment, to carefully go through their medical history, and to really 'see' their patients and all the factors that might influence their condition.
Victoria Sweet is an excellent writer and her book is NOTHING like a medical textbook. It really is very interesting and engaging. I wasn't planning to read this book but I'm glad I did.
September 23, 2019
In the midst of the proliferation of healthcare, healthcare oriented policies, and standardization, this book suggests a new method of combining the already existing kinds of practicing medicine-Fast and "Slow" in order to deliver "healing" to patients. Through examples derived from her career as both a Physician and an Historian, Dr. S builds a case for Slow that begins with an event that is personal to her-her father's admission for possible stroke following seizures-and ending with a sort of manifesto for what Slow is and what its place is in medicine. I loved reading this book because it was very concise. The writing was excellent, and made for an easy read. The issues addressed were poignant-evolution of medicine, the economics of healthcare, the advantages of scientific method, the validity of scientific method, the empathy principles and their being potentially overlooked by believing too much in the Fast approach-and served to enlighten the reader on just how much goes on when one or one's family, friends get sick, and how to be potentially aware of those things when seeking healthcare and treatment.
Interestingly, some of the concerns that she voiced, are similar to those raised by some notable members of previous generation of physician, for example, Dr. Henry Marsh, who in his book "Admissions" advocated for a thorough review of the changing of the tides which influenced the way he had to practice medicine and cater to his patients, in a way that increased the speed, and catapulted the patients into the system and carried them through it in the manner of a conveyor belt.
In addition, there are some concepts with regards to when to treat, that have been alluded to by Dr. Atul Gawande. This book covered those, in a new context, and in a way that can capture the reader's attention from the moment that they pick up the book to the moment that they close it.
Interestingly, some of the concerns that she voiced, are similar to those raised by some notable members of previous generation of physician, for example, Dr. Henry Marsh, who in his book "Admissions" advocated for a thorough review of the changing of the tides which influenced the way he had to practice medicine and cater to his patients, in a way that increased the speed, and catapulted the patients into the system and carried them through it in the manner of a conveyor belt.
In addition, there are some concepts with regards to when to treat, that have been alluded to by Dr. Atul Gawande. This book covered those, in a new context, and in a way that can capture the reader's attention from the moment that they pick up the book to the moment that they close it.
August 25, 2021
An unexpected find at a used book store I almost passed up, this book was exactly what I needed when I needed it. Amidst the burnout of practicing modern medicine, Sweet’s memoir is a salve to my soul.
Over the span of her career as an accomplished internist, Sweet has watched (and lived and experienced) as “healthcare” has replaced medicine, and doctors spend more time clicking away at the incessant nagging of EMRs than they do with their patients - listening, laying hands on them. As modern medicine has evolved in the name of efficiency, Sweet argues that there is nothing more efficient than time.
Good medicine. Just. Takes. Time.
Sweet reflects on several decades of experience and patient cases to emphasize the importance of slow medicine, of a return to the essence of medicine itself. The very soul of medicine has been sacrificed for modern “healthcare”, and she urges us to fight to reclaim it.
The chapters of this book are readable, relatable, and refreshing. I enjoyed following along and tracing her professional footsteps. From her interest in psychology, to her decision to pursue an internal medicine residency over her first love of psychiatry, to the lessons she gleaned from each of her patients… All of these moments were incredibly formative and ultimately shaped her personal style of practice.
Recently, after a long conversation about burnout and the ever increasing demands of providers amidst the ever decreasing amount of time, a mentor said to me, “Practice medicine the way that you want to practice medicine.” I think I’ll practice slow medicine.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in medicine, and more specifically with an interest in the humanity of medicine.
Over the span of her career as an accomplished internist, Sweet has watched (and lived and experienced) as “healthcare” has replaced medicine, and doctors spend more time clicking away at the incessant nagging of EMRs than they do with their patients - listening, laying hands on them. As modern medicine has evolved in the name of efficiency, Sweet argues that there is nothing more efficient than time.
Good medicine. Just. Takes. Time.
Sweet reflects on several decades of experience and patient cases to emphasize the importance of slow medicine, of a return to the essence of medicine itself. The very soul of medicine has been sacrificed for modern “healthcare”, and she urges us to fight to reclaim it.
The chapters of this book are readable, relatable, and refreshing. I enjoyed following along and tracing her professional footsteps. From her interest in psychology, to her decision to pursue an internal medicine residency over her first love of psychiatry, to the lessons she gleaned from each of her patients… All of these moments were incredibly formative and ultimately shaped her personal style of practice.
Recently, after a long conversation about burnout and the ever increasing demands of providers amidst the ever decreasing amount of time, a mentor said to me, “Practice medicine the way that you want to practice medicine.” I think I’ll practice slow medicine.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in medicine, and more specifically with an interest in the humanity of medicine.
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