Gut Feelings- Doctors and Patient-Centered Care: How Knowledge, Commitment to Care, and Empathy Improve Patients' Lives by Douglas A. Drossman and Johannah Ruddy
What's It About?
This book closes the loop in the Gut Feelings series. It presents the personal lives and successes of key opinion leaders in neurogastroenterology. We learn about their early lives, career influences, commitment to patients, and what makes them who they are today.If you struggle with chronic health issues and you’re looking for answers, finding a doctor who will listen to you and truly try to help you can be extremely challenging. Doctors often dismiss those cases that are too difficult and frustrating to solve and may even suggest that it’s “all in your head” (especially if you are a woman). I have been there myself as I have spent many years searching for answers to help alleviate my gastrointestinal issues.
It’s great to learn, as a patient, how to advocate for yourself and to read the stories of other patients to see that you’re not alone and that there’s actually hope, but what about getting more doctors on board with committing to patient-centered care, practicing empathy, and working alongside their patients as a team?
The authors of Gut Feelings: Disorders of Gut-Brain Interaction and Gut Feelings: The Patient’s Story are now back with a new book, Gut Feelings: Doctors and Patient-Centered Care — How Knowledge, Commitment to Care, and Empathy Improve Patients’ Lives. (All three are available for purchase here.) In their new book, Dr. Douglas A. Drossman, MD — renowned gastroenterologist, founder and COO of the internationally recognized nonprofit The Rome Foundation, and president of DrossmanCare — and Johannah Ruddy, M.ED, past Executive Director of The Rome Foundation, patient advocate and patient herself, present the personal lives and successes of key leaders in the Neurogastroenterology field. This is a recent and unique discipline within Gastroenterology that integrates the brain and gut in research and patient care. These are the healthcare providers who treat patients with Disorders of Gut-Brain Interaction (DGBI) which includes irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and is discussed in detail in the previous two books.
Informative Book for Doctors and Patients
This third book in the Gut Feelings series is an invaluable look at these doctors’ early lives, career influences, commitment to patients and what makes them who they are today. This is a great book for doctors (especially trainees and younger providers) as well as patients.
In the book, Olga C. Aroniadis, MD, MSC, FACG, Division Chief, Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Stony Brook University Hospital in NY, talks about her passion for medicine and, during her medical training, “honing the skills required to effectively communicate with patients, listen without interruption, and create an open space for patients to feel at ease sharing the most intimate aspects of their lives…”
Darren M. Brenner, MD, FACG, AGAF, RFF, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago says, “While I take great pleasure from all aspects of my profession (education, research, volunteering), my greatest sense of accomplishment and joy comes from patient interactions.”
Madhusudan Grover, MBBS, AGAF, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, says “For me, the sense of clinical accomplishment comes from knowing that I have offered my patient the very best of my knowledge and the knowledge around me and I have treated them with utmost respect and empathy.”
Valuing Patient-Centered Care
When reading this book and these providers’ stories, a few commonalities stand out in helping understand this unique group. Among them are support from their culture and family, early exposure to medicine and medical illness, diversions and avocations providing other creative outlets and reducing stress, having a mentor as well as being a mentor, valuing patient-centered care to improve the patient-provider relationship, having experienced hardships and willingness to share their vulnerabilities, finding satisfaction and meaningfulness when caring for patients.
As with the other two books in the series, links to videos are also included throughout the text, which is a valuable additional resource unique to these books. The book also includes product and educational resources. Gut Feelings: Doctors and Patient-Centered Care closes the loop in this 3-part Gut Feelings series. All three books are a must-read for doctors and patients alike!
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Gut Feelings: Doctors and Patient-Centered Care, as well as the previous two books, are available for purchase here.
