“What Our Patients Have Taught Us: Physicians Reflect on Lessons Learned about Life, Themselves and Their Profession” is the latest book from the Indiana Historical Society (IHS) Press, featuring more than 100 stories from physicians and other health care providers detailing how a specific patient enriched their lives through their interactions.
The book serves as a companion to the Indiana Historical Society Press’s 2013 publication, “Family Practice Stories: Memories, Reflections, and Stories of Hoosier Family Doctors of the Mid-Twentieth Century.”
The book’s author and editor, Richard Feldman, M.D., said the doctor-patient relationship “is not a one-way street.” While doctors commonly benefit patients with improved health and well-being, they also discover more about life and the human condition. The stories include a patient rallying to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic, a doctor dealing patiently with someone who believes he is transforming into a wolf, and a physician who finds herself helping a patient deal with her pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
“What Our Patients Have Taught Us: Physicians Reflect on Lessons Learned about Life, Themselves and Their Profession” is available through IHS’s Basile History Market and other places books are sold. For more information about the book or the IHS Press, call (317) 232-1882 or visit www.indianahistory.org.
About the Author
Feldman is a lifelong Hoosier who grew up in South Bend, Ind. He is a 1972 graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, and a 1977 graduate of the IU School of Medicine. After a short time in private practice in Carmel, Ind., Feldman began his long career as the program director of the Franciscan Health Indianapolis Family Medicine Residency Program in 1981, remaining there until 2018. He now continues as program director emeritus and senior medical education advisor. He holds appointments
as an assistant clinical professor at Indiana University School of Medicine and as an associate clinical professor at Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine. Feldman was appointed Indiana’s 20th State Health Commissioner by Governor Frank O’Bannon and served in that capacity from 1997 to 2001.
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Title: What Our Patients Have Taught Us: Physicians Reflect on Lessons Learned about Life, Themselves and Their Profession
Publisher: Indiana Historical Society Press
Pages: 367
Size: 6 x 9
Cover: Hardback
Publication Date: November 2023
Cost: $24.95
Print ISBN: 978-0-87195-473-2