"These essays strive to break the silence, to ask the questions that 
should be asked, that should have been asked. They illustrate how 
easily pride, misunderstanding, laziness, denial, poor data-gathering, 
avarice, expediency, selfishness and, above all, poor communication 
can undo the best of technology, the best that medicine has to offer."
—Abraham Verghese

Written by physicians, caregivers, patients, and family members, the 
twelve essays collected in Silence Kills present a compelling, and 
often frightening, insider look at the lack of communication and 
understanding currently plaguing the American health care system. 

These stories explore a wide and complicated range of experiences—
a doctor is pressured into sending a patient home from the emergency 
room but later must face his decision when the patient suddenly dies; 
a physician must deal with her self-doubt as she faces a malpractice 
lawsuit and must come to terms with the fact that even doctors are 
fallible and human; a woman fights for her mother's mental health 
and well-being against a system eager to over-medicate the elderly; 
and more—but all share one thing: a frustration with a system that 
hinders communication and often leads to unnecessary suffering. 

Inspired by groundbreaking research by VitalSmarts, a global leader 
in organizational performance and leadership, and the American 
Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), and supported by the 
Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Lee Gutkind, editor and founder of 
Creative Nonfiction, has collected the essays in this volume—in the 
hope that these voices, speaking out, taking action and risks, will 
inspire others to make changes that will improve communication 
within our troubled health care system.

_________________________________________________________

LEE GUTKIND is the founding editor of Creative Nonfiction and 
prize-winning author or editor of more than a dozen books, the most 
recent of which is Almost Human: Making Robots Think. Gutkind 
travels widely throughout the world giving workshops and readings, 
explaining the craft and the mission of the creative nonfiction genre. 
KAREN WOLK FEINSTEIN is president of the Jewish Healthcare 
Foundation and chair of the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative. 
ABRAHAM VERGHESE, a physician and writer, directs the Center 
for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health 
Sciences Center, San Antonio.


Medical Humanities Series, Thomas Mayo, series editor


Of Related Interest



SILENCE KILLS

978-0-87074-518-8 CLOTH

$22.50
RAGE AND RECONCILIATION

978-0-87074-503-4 PAPER

$19.95