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Accidental Kindness: A Doctor's Notes on Empathy
We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often look for relief not only from physical symptoms but also from our self-blame. We want from our doctors kindness under any of its many empathy, caring, compassion, humanity. We look for safety and forgiveness. But we forget that doctors, too, are often in need of forgiveness—from their patients and from themselves. No doctor enters the medical profession expecting to be unkind or to make mistakes, but because of the complexity of our current medical system and because doctors are human, they often find themselves acting much less kindly than they would like to. Drawing on his work as a primary care physician and a behavioral scientist, Michael Stein artfully examines the often conflicting goals of patients and their doctors. In those differences, Stein recognizes that kindness should not be a patient's forbidden or unrealistic expectation. This book leaves us with new knowledge of and insights into what we might hope for, and what might go wrong, or right, in the most intimate clinical moments.
- GenresNonfictionMedicine
218 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 18, 2023
This is not a patch on Danielle Ofri's marvellous What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine. It doesn't cover quite the same ground, but close enough to compare the books. The first chapter was quite startling in that if Stein had his way, we would all be at risk from some very bad doctoring.
He feels that the introduction all doctors have, dissecting a cadaver, shouldn't be the first act, that it teaches a lack of compassion, a lack of awareness of the human who had the body, an objectivity that is, if not callousness, at least is a kind of way of viewing the patient as an object for whom some doctors wouldn't even bother asking the name.
So if doctors go on the wards first, trainee doctors, students, and learn to treat people as human beings with compassion and kindness that would be great. But we go to hospital to be treated of our illnesses first and foremost, and if a doctor doesn't do that dissection first, he doesn't know enough about bodies to even begin to think of treating disorders.
The first chapter actually was a real trial. The author, aged 12, had suddenly lost his father and together with cadavers that was the main subject of the first chapter. It was a bit boring relating so much to that. I appreciated the author's great introspection but at times it seemed to be more navel-gazing. I nearly dnf'd the book at this point.
But I didn't. I perservered and some chapters were really good, the one about the non-compliant HIV patient with whom he had a pact never to say HIV or AIDS out loud, and then he lost his temper with her one day and said it, in front of her daughter and her game of pretence and hiding from her own shame was up.
A lot of the chapters seemed to be mea culpa, more navel gazing, guilt over not being as kind and compassionate as he could be... it got tedious and I skimmed the last chapter only because I couldn't bear to dnf it with one chapter to go.
It might be my mood. I have picked up and dnf'd quite a few books these last few weeks, they aren't on my shelves I didn't read enough to bother adding them. Or it might be I summed up the book right, at least for me.
Danielle Ofri covered the same and much greater ground in What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine and perhaps it was the diversity of emotions and her way of relating to patients that came across so well in her writing that made it a 5, if not 10 star book, and this one, 3.5. Rounded down.
I think others might enjoy this book more than I did, it isn't a bad book by any means, and I look forward to reading some much more positive reviews than I feel able to write.
He feels that the introduction all doctors have, dissecting a cadaver, shouldn't be the first act, that it teaches a lack of compassion, a lack of awareness of the human who had the body, an objectivity that is, if not callousness, at least is a kind of way of viewing the patient as an object for whom some doctors wouldn't even bother asking the name.
So if doctors go on the wards first, trainee doctors, students, and learn to treat people as human beings with compassion and kindness that would be great. But we go to hospital to be treated of our illnesses first and foremost, and if a doctor doesn't do that dissection first, he doesn't know enough about bodies to even begin to think of treating disorders.
The first chapter actually was a real trial. The author, aged 12, had suddenly lost his father and together with cadavers that was the main subject of the first chapter. It was a bit boring relating so much to that. I appreciated the author's great introspection but at times it seemed to be more navel-gazing. I nearly dnf'd the book at this point.
But I didn't. I perservered and some chapters were really good, the one about the non-compliant HIV patient with whom he had a pact never to say HIV or AIDS out loud, and then he lost his temper with her one day and said it, in front of her daughter and her game of pretence and hiding from her own shame was up.
A lot of the chapters seemed to be mea culpa, more navel gazing, guilt over not being as kind and compassionate as he could be... it got tedious and I skimmed the last chapter only because I couldn't bear to dnf it with one chapter to go.
It might be my mood. I have picked up and dnf'd quite a few books these last few weeks, they aren't on my shelves I didn't read enough to bother adding them. Or it might be I summed up the book right, at least for me.
Danielle Ofri covered the same and much greater ground in What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine and perhaps it was the diversity of emotions and her way of relating to patients that came across so well in her writing that made it a 5, if not 10 star book, and this one, 3.5. Rounded down.
I think others might enjoy this book more than I did, it isn't a bad book by any means, and I look forward to reading some much more positive reviews than I feel able to write.
February 2, 2023
Early during my first year of medical school, I completed a questionnaire that a graduate student was circulating for her thesis. Her survey included the question “Would you rather be intelligent or kind?” The answer was obvious to me and took not a second’s thought: I checked “intelligent.” I was, after all, beginning medical school, and intelligence was what I needed, what mattered. Looking back, the entirety of my career has been a slow understanding that I checked the wrong box.
Accidental Kindness is a collection of previously published essays arranged so as to give a sense of how the author’s thoughts on the human side of medicine have evolved. At the centre of the book and perhaps the author’s life is the loss, when he was 13, of his father. It was a sudden death from heart failure that occurred in an ER, and Stein held his dad’s GP responsible. It seems that for years a complex mix of feelings smouldered within: a sense of injustice, anger, and grief. Stein believes that his father’s death fuelled his decision to become a physician.
After many years practising medicine, he himself made a serious error—not a medical error, but an interpersonal one. In exasperation, he said something—something that broke his unspoken pact with an HIV+ patient who persistently failed to adhere to her treatment plan and whose condition was deteriorating. (I think he’s far harder on himself than any reader would be.) Stein subsequently made two more mistakes with patients and he ended up taking a leave from his practice. This provided him with time for reflection.
The first essay considers medical students and the anatomy lab. Beyond acquainting them with the human body, the intimate experience of dissecting a once living, breathing human changes people emotionally. Stein’s response was more extreme than that of his classmates. Other essays address:
*doctor-patient interactions;
*his own experience selecting a neurosurgeon and internist when he was diagnosed with a tumour of the skull;
*how we subconsciously take in a huge amount of accurate information about people by watching them and how problems start when we second-guess ourselves using the tools of our intellect.
A large part of the book focuses on a case in which a surgeon irreparably damaged a patient’s facial nerve when removing a tumour of the parotid gland. Stein interviewed both the physician and the patient. Having done a lot of work with addicts, he also includes an interesting account of an appointment with one.
As the title suggests, this is a work about kindness. It’s also about errors and forgiveness. It is not simplistic or sentimental. It’s nuanced and feels true.
I’d never heard of this book and my picking it up at all was, ironically, accidental. I’m glad I did. In its humanity and reflectiveness, it reminded me of Jay Baruch’s The Tornado of Life, another fine book by a physician-writer.
There is drama to being a doctor. At its best, doctoring is a specific form of impersonation, or in-personation. It is when I take a patient’s passion (her pain, her complaint) within myself for a few seconds. When the disorder of a meandering conversation pulls me into the patient’s story, making their story my story, and seeing it through their eyes begins to create order in me. It is a kind of self-transformation. It can’t be acted. It lies in some deeper script indelibly written in the nervous system, connecting astonishment and gratification.
Accidental Kindness is a collection of previously published essays arranged so as to give a sense of how the author’s thoughts on the human side of medicine have evolved. At the centre of the book and perhaps the author’s life is the loss, when he was 13, of his father. It was a sudden death from heart failure that occurred in an ER, and Stein held his dad’s GP responsible. It seems that for years a complex mix of feelings smouldered within: a sense of injustice, anger, and grief. Stein believes that his father’s death fuelled his decision to become a physician.
After many years practising medicine, he himself made a serious error—not a medical error, but an interpersonal one. In exasperation, he said something—something that broke his unspoken pact with an HIV+ patient who persistently failed to adhere to her treatment plan and whose condition was deteriorating. (I think he’s far harder on himself than any reader would be.) Stein subsequently made two more mistakes with patients and he ended up taking a leave from his practice. This provided him with time for reflection.
The first essay considers medical students and the anatomy lab. Beyond acquainting them with the human body, the intimate experience of dissecting a once living, breathing human changes people emotionally. Stein’s response was more extreme than that of his classmates. Other essays address:
*doctor-patient interactions;
*his own experience selecting a neurosurgeon and internist when he was diagnosed with a tumour of the skull;
*how we subconsciously take in a huge amount of accurate information about people by watching them and how problems start when we second-guess ourselves using the tools of our intellect.
A large part of the book focuses on a case in which a surgeon irreparably damaged a patient’s facial nerve when removing a tumour of the parotid gland. Stein interviewed both the physician and the patient. Having done a lot of work with addicts, he also includes an interesting account of an appointment with one.
As the title suggests, this is a work about kindness. It’s also about errors and forgiveness. It is not simplistic or sentimental. It’s nuanced and feels true.
I’d never heard of this book and my picking it up at all was, ironically, accidental. I’m glad I did. In its humanity and reflectiveness, it reminded me of Jay Baruch’s The Tornado of Life, another fine book by a physician-writer.
There is drama to being a doctor. At its best, doctoring is a specific form of impersonation, or in-personation. It is when I take a patient’s passion (her pain, her complaint) within myself for a few seconds. When the disorder of a meandering conversation pulls me into the patient’s story, making their story my story, and seeing it through their eyes begins to create order in me. It is a kind of self-transformation. It can’t be acted. It lies in some deeper script indelibly written in the nervous system, connecting astonishment and gratification.
November 24, 2024
To be honest, this book is hard to read, as far as writing style, which is 90% rhetorical questions and lists of unresolved logical and emotional possibilities.
However, I find the ideas this book brings up and processes through to be highly valuable and important. As someone disabled and chronically ill, I had extensive and varied experiences with healthcare providers, many of them negative, which has led to medical trauma and burnout. I have given many years trying understanding the doctor-patient relationship. What is fair of me to expect of my doctor? What am I looking for? Why do I continue to go, when I most often leave disappointed and with a fraction less hope?
This book explores these ideas and more with the credibility and insight of the first hand perspective of a practitioner. Despite its weaknesses, I am sharing this book with my partner and my friends who work as what Stein refers to as “healers”. Healthcare providers get next-to-no training or support in the interpersonal dynamics of providing care for their patients, which includes soul care given through the simple display of kindness. At the very least, this book serves as a starting point for important conversations that all humans, who will each be in the vulnerable position of “patient” at some point in their life, have stake in.
However, I find the ideas this book brings up and processes through to be highly valuable and important. As someone disabled and chronically ill, I had extensive and varied experiences with healthcare providers, many of them negative, which has led to medical trauma and burnout. I have given many years trying understanding the doctor-patient relationship. What is fair of me to expect of my doctor? What am I looking for? Why do I continue to go, when I most often leave disappointed and with a fraction less hope?
This book explores these ideas and more with the credibility and insight of the first hand perspective of a practitioner. Despite its weaknesses, I am sharing this book with my partner and my friends who work as what Stein refers to as “healers”. Healthcare providers get next-to-no training or support in the interpersonal dynamics of providing care for their patients, which includes soul care given through the simple display of kindness. At the very least, this book serves as a starting point for important conversations that all humans, who will each be in the vulnerable position of “patient” at some point in their life, have stake in.
January 7, 2023
We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often look for relief not only from physical symptoms but also from our self-blame. We want from our doctors kindness under any of its many names: empathy, caring, compassion, humanity. We look for safety and forgiveness. But we forget that doctors, too, are often in need of forgiveness―from their patients and from themselves. No doctor enters the medical profession expecting to be unkind or to make mistakes, but because of the complexity of our current medical system and because doctors are human, they often find themselves acting much less kindly than they would like to.
Drawing on his work as a primary care physician and a behavioral scientist, Michael Stein artfully examines the often-conflicting goals of patients and their doctors. In those differences, Stein recognizes that kindness should not be a patient's forbidden or unrealistic expectation. Accidental Kindness: A Doctor’s Notes on Empathy leaves us with new knowledge of, and insights into, what we might hope for and what might go wrong, or right, in the most intimate clinical moments.
Drawing on his work as a primary care physician and a behavioral scientist, Michael Stein artfully examines the often-conflicting goals of patients and their doctors. In those differences, Stein recognizes that kindness should not be a patient's forbidden or unrealistic expectation. Accidental Kindness: A Doctor’s Notes on Empathy leaves us with new knowledge of, and insights into, what we might hope for and what might go wrong, or right, in the most intimate clinical moments.
November 23, 2024
Too real not to be relatable.
July 28, 2023
I am not up to date with some of the medical terminology in this book. “We often look for relief not from physical symptoms but also from our self blame.” It’s interesting to analyze the patient vs doctor aspect because we will all be a patient at some point in our lives. I think I will read this book closer to when I’m in medical school.
January 2, 2023
A physician explores the role of kindness in medicine, compassion fatigue, and mistakes/forgiveness. Some familiar feelings and important questions to grapple with as someone interested in peds oncology.
April 8, 2023
Dr Stein makes a strong and beautiful case for kindness (accidental or otherwise) to be part of the covenant that serves the doctor patient relationship. I think he makes an even broader case for kindness to underpin every relationship that is worth caring about.
Read
May 7, 2023Kindness in what you say, how you say it, and what you do not say ... everyone entering the medical professions should read this book.
October 8, 2023
important message. appreciated the evidence base. seems so obvious but clearly it's not to some people. i feel for the doc who operated on the woman left with facial paralysis.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2024
A must read I believe for all practicing physicians.
August 26, 2023
My library displays a selection of best picks each month and this book was in the display. I had not heard of it before and found it to be an interesting read. It is written by a doctor who reflects on the role of kindness in medicine and the effect it has on patients and their care.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews