Technological Medicine: The Changing World of Doctors and Patients
Advances in medicine have brought us the stethoscope, artificial kidneys, and computerized health records. They have also changed the doctor-patient relationship. This book explores how the technologies of medicine are created and how we respond to the problems and successes of their use. Stanley Joel Reiser, MD, walks us through the ways medical innovations exert their influence by discussing a number of selected technologies, including the X-ray, ultrasound, and respirator. Reiser creates a...
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Advances in medicine have brought us artificial organs, instruments, and the digitization of record keeping. Technology has not only revolutionized medicine, but so has the very idea that there is a scientific solution to human disease, ailments, and health problems. This book explores how the technologies of medicine are created; how society, patients, and practitioners respond to the problems and successes of their use; and how this response changes them. To demonstrate the different ways through which medical innovations exert their influence, a number of selected technologies, such as the stethoscope, the X-ray, ultrasounds, and the computerized health record, are examined. The understandings gained through this exploration are then applied to suggest fundamental ways to alter thinking and practice in health care and thereby more effectively meet the challenges of living with technological medicine. Dr. Stanley Joel Reiser?s work will be indispensable to a wide readership of health professionals, health policymakers, and the general public.\\ The New York Times - Abigail Zuger [Reiser's] latest collection of essays escapes the ivory tower and resonates precisely with today's headlines. Anyone with more than a passing interest in our present health care logjam will be intrigued and enlightened by Dr. Reiser's painstaking retracing of its origins.
1. Revealing the body's whispers: how the stethoscope transformed medicine; 2. Enigmatic pictures: how patients and doctors encountered the X-ray; 3. Life-saving but unaffordable: the improbable journey of the artificial kidney; 4. Promising rescue, preventing release: the double edge of the artificial respirator; 5. The quest to unify health care through the patient record; 6. Putting technologies on trial: from bloodletting to antibiotics to the Oregon initiative; 7. Amid the technological triumphs of disease prevention - where is health?; 8. The technological transformation of birth; 9. Governing the empire of machines.
\ From the Publisher"Dr. Stanley Joel Reiser, a physician, historian and medical ethicist now at George Washington University, has been ruminating on these matters in scholarly circles for years. His latest collection of essays escapes the ivory tower and resonates precisely with today’s headlines. Anyone with more than a passing interest in our present health care logjam will be intrigued and enlightened by Dr. Reiser’s painstaking retracing of its origins." -Abigail Zuger, M.D.. The New York Times\ “In a world of medicine so siloed, Stanley Reiser creates a linguistic bridge that allows both patient and practitioner to cross easily – from dialogue to technology, from care to cure. The result is a refreshing perspective on health as we know it today.” – John P. Howe III, MD, President and CEO, Project HOPE\ “Wrap a physician, historian of science, philosopher/health policy expert, and accomplished writer and parable-maker (storyteller) all in one author at the same time, and you have Stanley Reiser. This important book uses the spotlight of history to illuminate the conundrums facing today’s healthcare industry.” – Roger Bulger, Past President of the Association of Academic Health Centers and Chairman of the Board of the Institute of Multicultural and Minority Medicine\ “This is an important historical overview for the public to understand health care, as our technological medicine goes through reform, and for practitioners to appreciate the roots of our diagnostic tests and treatments. Technological Medicine is a must-read for those involved in changing our health care today.” – John D. Stoeckle, MD, Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, and Honorary Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital\ "Dr. Stanley Joel Reiser, a physician, historian and medical ethicist now at George Washington University, has been ruminating on these matters in scholarly circles for years. His latest collection of essays escapes the ivory tower and resonates precisely with today’s headlines. Anyone with more than a passing interest in our present health care logjam will be intrigued and enlightened by Dr. Reiser’s painstaking retracing of its origins." -Abigail Zuger, M.D.. The New York Times\ “Studies of invention always reveal that machines reinvent us as surely as we invent them. Stanley Reiser offers a breathtakingly intimate portrait of how we’ve been molded by our stethoscopes, statistics, X-rays, iron-lungs . . . how they’ve recreated us. Forceps, sonograms, and bedside charts have each left us irreversibly altered.” – John H. Lienhard, author of The Engines of Our Ingenuity and How Invention Begins\ "It is to Reiser's credit that, despite much emphasis on machines and instruments, he puts the patient above it all and constantly steers his discussions on technologies toward patient-doctor-health care provider relationships. Highly recommended."\ --Choice\ "In Technological Medicine, Stanley Joel Reiser explores the difficulties encountered by proposed technological advances as well as the practical and ethical conundrums these advances create once accepted. Reiser...discusses such technologies as the x-ray, the artifi cial kidney, the artificial respirator, and the electronic medical patient record." - Richard S. Mathis, Science\ "For each technology considered, Reiser provides a rich historical and sociological context that suggests several key lessons that seem widely applicable regardless of the technology under consideration." -Eric G. Campbell, PhD, The Journal of the American Medical Association\ "Technological Medicine condenses this long time-thinking...Well-written, amply documented..this book may be read as an ethical discussion of the use of technologies in medicine and as a contribution to the civic debate on US modern Medicine." - Christelle Rabier, Social History of Medicine\ \ \ \ \ \ Abigail Zuger[Reiser's] latest collection of essays escapes the ivory tower and resonates precisely with today's headlines. Anyone with more than a passing interest in our present health care logjam will be intrigued and enlightened by Dr. Reiser's painstaking retracing of its origins.\ —The New York Times\ \ \ Library JournalReiser (health care sciences & health policy, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine & Health Sciences) explores technology's impact on medical care, from the invention of the stethoscope to the current push for electronic medical records. Using part history, part commentary on how society handles new medical technologies formats, he examines who gets access to high-tech medicine, possible test subjects, and whether new ideas are really any better than the old methods. He uses examples like the artificial respirator and the ethical dilemmas of the Karen Ann Quinlan case. Artificial kidneys, antibiotics, and birthing technology such as forceps, anesthesia, and ultrasound also get coverage. Concluding the book is a call for a full embrace of a larger concept of wellness, better patient interactions, and better social policies created within, rather than without, the medical community to rule the medical field's relationship with technology. VERDICT Full of footnotes and heady thoughts, this slim volume is for the academic crowd only.—Elizabeth Williams, Washoe Cty. Lib. Syst., Reno, NV\\\ \
