Let Me Heal: The Opportunity to Preserve Excellence in American Medicine - Tapa dura

This thoughtful scholarly treatise on the residency, the most influential learning period for young physicians, is a major contribution to our understanding of how America produces its physician workforce. It notes the educational, scientific, economic, social, legal, ethical, and political influences which produce tensions and conflicts in the training experience. Dr. Ludmerer provides a platform for examining these influences and he proposes ways for the learning environment to be more flexible, while maintaining high standards and the professionalism we all want to retain in our nation's physicians. I heartily recommend this superb book to all who are interested in our nation's healthcare system. (Louis W. Sullivan, MD, President Emeritus, Morehouse School of Medicine, US Secretary of Health and Human Services, 1989-1993)

In engaging and compelling prose, Kenneth Ludmerer vividly chronicles and insightfully analyzes the medical and social history of the residency phase of American medical education. Based on rich observational and documentary data, he brilliantly evaluates the achievements, tensions, and shortcomings of the residency system. Let Me Heal, the entreaty that he chose for the book's title, has contemporary as well as historic significance. It is associated with Ludmerer's stirring analysis of how the present-day struggles with patient care and health care delivery in the United States create challenges for good medical education, and of how the residency system can contribute to making medical care better and more affordable. This landmark book should be ready by all who are concerned with medical education and patient care in America. (Renee C. Fox Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences University of Pennsylvania)

The complete fascinating story of the graduate education of US physicians, its 19th century origins, its 20th century glories, and now its threatened decline in the hands of a commercialized hospital industry and a for-profit health system. A compelling read that all who would understand our health care problems will enjoy, and a masterful study sure to become the definitive reference in its field. Another notable contribution by Ludmerer to the history of medical education and its relation to contemporary society. (Arnold S. Relman, MD, Professor Emeritusof Medicine and of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and former Editor-in-Chief, The New England Journal of Medicine)

Let Me Heal is an eye-opening analysis of residency training and a wonderful exploration of its evolution. This third book in Ludmerer's trilogy on American medicine is a tour de force. I would consider it an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand medical education and for those with a stake in what the future might hold. (Abraham Verghese, MD Profesor of Medicine, Stanford University Author of Cutting For Steone)

We ... consider this book an invaluable contribution to the field and encourage everyone involved with residency training to read it. (Editors, Journal of Graduate Medical Education)

This book represents an important contribution to our understanding of the history and current state of American residency education and of ers a strong foundation for future research. (Science Magazine)

[a] meticulous new book. (Lara Goitein, The New York Review of Books)

In Let Me Heal, prize-winning author Kenneth M.Ludmerer provides the first-ever account of the residency system for training doctors in the United States and, by tracing its evolution, explores how the residency system is of fundamental importance to the health of the nation.

In the making of a doctor, the residency system represents the dominant formative influence. It is during the three to nine years spent in residency that doctors come of professional age, acquiring the knowledge and skills of their specialty or subspecialty, forming a professional identify, and developing habitts, behaviors, attitudes, and values that last a professional lifetime. Let Me Heal examines all dimensions of the residency system: historical evolution, educational principles, moral underpinnings, financing and administration, and cultural components. It focuses on the experience of being a resident, on how that experience has changed over time, and on how well the residency system is fulfilling its obligation to produce outstanding doctors. Most importantly, it analyzes the mutual relationship beetween residency education and patient care in America. The book shows that the quality of residency training ultimately depends on the quality of patient care that residents observe, but that there is much that residency training can do to produce doctors who practice in a better, more affordable fashion.