In Shock : How nearly dying made me a better doctor by Dr Rana Awdish

'I read the first chapters at such a pace that I almost had to remind myself to breathe.' Sunday Times

'Tense, powerful and gripping... her writing style is often nothing short of beautiful - evocative and emotional.' Adam Kay, Observer

At seven months pregnant, intensive care doctor Rana Awdish suffered a catastrophic medical event, haemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. She spent months fighting for her life in her own hospital, enduring a series of organ failures and multiple major surgeries.

Every step of the way, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected and shocking than her battle to survive: her fellow doctors’ inability to see and acknowledge the pain of loss and human suffering, the result of a self-protective barrier hard-wired in medical training.

In Shock is Rana Awdish's searing account of her extraordinary journey from doctor to patient, during which she sees for the first time the dysfunction of her profession’s disconnection from patients and the flaws in her own past practice as a doctor. Shatteringly personal yet wholly universal, it is both a brave roadmap for anyone navigating illness and a call to arms for doctors to see each patient not as a diagnosis but as a human being.

Review

"Outstanding... What marks it out is not the scale or urgency of the trauma, although I read the first chapters at such a pace that I almost had to remind myself to breathe. It is the writing. It sparks and crackles with a dark energy... The writing is not just intense, but intelligent... In Shock stands above other patient memoirs." (James McConnachie The Sunday Times)

"Tense, powerful and gripping... her writing style is often nothing short of beautiful - evocative and emotional." (Adam Kay The Observer)

"In Shock is both an enthralling page-turner and a haunting call to arms for the medical profession to practice with greater kindness, compassion and humility. Awdish captures beautifully how and why doctors, against our best selves, can lose sight of our patients in furious pursuit of the diagnosis, the save, the cure. Anyone – doctor or otherwise – whose life has been touched by illness will be transfixed by this deeply moving tale of catastrophic illness and everything it teaches us." (Rachel Clarke, author of Your Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story)

"Awdish looks at the way we practice medicine with a combination of love and outrage. She writes beautifully about the secret, shameful feelings many doctors feel they have to hide and she shows us how we might do better. After reading this book, I feel like a different doctor." (Gabriel Weston, author of Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story)

"A brave, powerful memoir about what it is like to be both a doctor and a patient... There is a widsom that literally comes from suffering." (The Times)

"There are few recent books to compare it to. Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, another physician’s account of illness, ended with his death. Awdish lives to tell the tale, but her cascade of medical problems is appallingly severe. Like [Adam] Kay’s, her writing is motivated by trauma, both her own and that of her medical colleagues…The dramatic story of her illness and recovery alone would make the book compelling, but in the growing genre of medical non-fiction, it is her reflections on medical practice that really stand out." (Dr Alexander Van Tulleken TLS)

"Compelling and insightful, this story of what a doctor learns through coming close to death is packed with both action and reflection." (Cathy Rentzenbrink, bestselling author of The Last Act of Love)

"Urgent and supremely eloquent... In Shock is a book to set alongside the likes of Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, Direct Red by Gabriel Weston and, of course, Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air." (Caroline Sanderson The Bookseller)

"An extraordinary memoir." (Daily Mail)

"Awdish describes her experiences powerfully... In Shock is a reminder that the sick are not subhuman, doctors are not superhuman, and that medicine needs to be human in order to truly heal." (Sarah Ditum Mail on Sunday)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Corgi (24 Jan. 2019)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0552174750

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0552174756

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.7 x 1.7 x 19.8 cm

Customer reviews: 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars    2,091 ratings

About the Author

Rana Awdish is an intensive care doctor and the director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Programme at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Dr Awdish's mandate is to improve the patient experience across the US health system and speak on patient advocacy at healthcare venues across the country. She was awarded the Critical Care Teaching Award in 2016 and, in 2017, the Press Ganey Physician of the Year Award and The Schwartz Center's National Compassionate Caregiver Award.