Also Human

Doctors are the people we turn to when we fall ill. They are the people we trust with our lives, and with the lives of those we love. Yet who can doctors turn to at moments of stress, or when their own working lives break down? What does it take to confront death, disease, distress and suffering every day? To work in a healthcare system that is stretched to breaking point? To carry the responsibility of making decisions that can irrevocably change someone's life - or possibly end it? And how do doctors cope with their own questions and fears, when they are expected to have all the answers? Caroline Elton is a psychologist who specialises in helping doctors. For over twenty years she has listened as doctors have unburdened themselves of the pressures of their jobs: the obstetrician whose own fertility treatment failed; the trainee oncologist who found herself unable to treat patients suffering from the disease that killed her father; the brilliant neurosurgeon struggling to progress her career in an environment that was hostile to women. Drawing on extraordinary case studies and decades of work supporting clinicians, Also Human presents a provocative, perceptive and deeply humane examination of the modern medical profession.

'Written with perceptive sympathy for the wounded healer, it is necessary reading for both doctors and patients.'
Hilary Mantel

'Crucial and timely.'
Atul Gawande

'A furious dispatch from the front line of the hospital system.'
The Times

'Book of the Week'
'Fascinating and troubling. Read it and weep.'
Susie Orbach

'Haunting, beautiful and urgent.'
Johann Hari

'At the heart of this book is the problem of how emotional resilience can be identified in prospective doctors and strengthened in practising doctors. We are fallible human beings, not omniscient gods.'
Henry Marsh, Sunday Times