I found Leslie Jamison’s writing very engaging and personable, because she isn’t overly formal in her speech and she uses numerous similes to make her experiences relatable to others. Although her job is fairly serious, considering she must follow strict guidelines and she plays a crucial role in the developments of young doctors’ careers, she speaks colloquially as if she is in a friendly conversation. At times, it even seems like she is poking fun at the medical actor program, by assigning each patient role a title such as “Blackout Buddy” or “Appendicitis Angela,” and claiming that the program is full of “high-school kids earning booze money” (4). I found this initially lighthearted tone to be engaging and friendly, and it made me want to keep reading.
Furthermore, Jamison does a great job of opening up to the reader on a personal level by fusing her own personal medical experiences with those …show more content…
Jamison believes that voicing concern for their patients is not enough, and that doctors “have to say the right words to get credit for compassion”(3). I was unaware that certain buzzwords and phrases such as “that must really be hard” are overused by physicians and therefore come off as less sympathetic to patients (6). In addition to word choice, Jamison highlights the importance of a doctor’s tone while asking patients questions. In her meetings with Dr. M., Jamison discusses how the superficiality of the doctor’s obviously routine questions about her life forced her to “pretended [they] knew each other rather than acknowledging that [they] didn’t” (23). In class we have talked a lot about how introducing more empathy in the practice of medicine can improve patient doctor relationships, but we haven’t spent as much time discussing how exactly empathy should be
Furthermore, Jamison does a great job of opening up to the reader on a personal level by fusing her own personal medical experiences with those …show more content…
Jamison believes that voicing concern for their patients is not enough, and that doctors “have to say the right words to get credit for compassion”(3). I was unaware that certain buzzwords and phrases such as “that must really be hard” are overused by physicians and therefore come off as less sympathetic to patients (6). In addition to word choice, Jamison highlights the importance of a doctor’s tone while asking patients questions. In her meetings with Dr. M., Jamison discusses how the superficiality of the doctor’s obviously routine questions about her life forced her to “pretended [they] knew each other rather than acknowledging that [they] didn’t” (23). In class we have talked a lot about how introducing more empathy in the practice of medicine can improve patient doctor relationships, but we haven’t spent as much time discussing how exactly empathy should be