First published 2014
Sandeep Jauhar directs the Heart Failure Program at a Long Island hospital and confronts a healthcare system that has lost its moral center. Building on his earlier memoir Intern, Jauhar dissects his profession with surgical precision. He reveals how doctors prescribe needless tests to avoid lawsuits and cover expenses. Patients bounce between fifteen specialists during single hospital stays, never receiving complete pictures of their conditions, then face bills reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jauhar examines his own ethical compromises as financial pressures force him to moonlight for a practitioner who charges enormous fees for dubious procedures. The author transforms personal struggle into urgent social criticism, demanding reform of a system that corrupts the healing profession. This memoir combines intimate confession with sharp analysis of medical economics and ethics, offering readers an unvarnished view of what happens behind examination room doors and inside doctors' conflicted minds.
Genres: medical, non-fiction, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-struggle, social-criticism
Setting: Long Island
Period: 21st-century
288 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: medical-trauma