Sick of Doctors?
A Prescription for Patient Empowerment
By: Lorene M. Burkhart
Published: June 1, 2010
Format: Perfect Paperback, 204 pages
ISBN-10: 0984180605
ISBN-13: 978-0984180608
Publisher: Burkhart Network, LLC
"In today's medical world, it is up to each of us to maintain health on a daily basis and not be dependent on an all-powerful Doctor God to do it for us. The old days are over". writes teacher, broadcaster, and corporate executive Lorene M. Burkhart, in her landmark book Sick of Doctors? A Prescription for Patient Empowerment. The author describes the history of medicine and how it has evolved into the modern system, as well as problems with doctors and the medical environment in which they operate.
Lorene Burkhart recognizes that part of the problem surrounding doctors and healthcare is that people think that the old system still exists today. For the author, nothing could be further from the truth. She wisely opens the book by describing the evolution of both the medical system itself, and the changes surrounding the doctors who work within that system. In place of the previous medical paradigm, where control was handed over to an all powerful doctor, Lorene Burkhart supports an outcomes based approach to medicine. By taking control of one's own body back from the hands of the medical community, they doctor patient relationship is improved and better health of the patient is the result.
Lorene M. Burkhart (photo left) advocates patients taking more personal control of both their daily health, and their care when in the hands of the medical community. According to the author, the status accorded to doctors that she describes as Doctor God, should be among the first concepts questioned and discarded by everyone. She describes how not only the doctor and patient relationship has deteriorated over the decades, but also how the relationships between doctors and nurses is also very problematic and occasionally abusive. For Lorene Burkhart, patient empowerment includes giving up the deeply ingrained idea that the doctor is always right. The book includes numerous case studies where incompetence among doctors is so commonplace that it may even be the norm.
For me, the power of the book is how Lorene Burkhart empowers the reader as both personal health advocate and to become more assertive in any doctor and patient relationship. For Lorene Burkhart, patients must seek out their own medical knowledge and actively question and demand answers from doctors. The internet has lifted the veil of omnipotence from the medical community, changing the reputation of doctors forever, just as the medical system of a previous era is gone as well. The author understands that many people are either unaware of the deeper, underlying changes in the medical system, or ignore them willfully. This book provides a powerful service to the general public by making people aware of the changing role of the medical profession, and of doctors' evolving opinion of themselves as all-powerful as well.
I highly recommend the essential and must read book Sick of Doctors? A Prescription for Patient Empowerment by Lorene M. Burkhart, to anyone serious about their own healthcare, and how doctors and the medical community really work in today's society. The book should also be required reading for every doctor, medical student, intern, and nurse working within the medical field. The author's ideas about outcomes based medicine and personal empowerment are simply too important to ignore.
Read the paradigm shattering book Sick of Doctors? A Prescription for Patient Empowerment by Lorene M. Burkhart, and take back control of your own healthcare and remove that power from the hands of doctors. Reading this book will improve your health, and perhaps have a deep and lasting impact on the way that medicine is practiced today and tomorrow as well.
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