How Do You Feel? One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine

How Do You Feel? One Doctor's Search for Humanity in Medicine

BOOK REVIEW

How Do You Feel? One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine

By Jessi Gold, MD, MS; S&S/Simon Element, October 2024

288 pages • $21.7 (hardcover)

Reviewed by Parma J. Zahid, MD

Last month, psychiatrist and author Jessi Gold, MD, MS, released her first book How Do You Feel? One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine. The book, which takes place during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, is a 3 part mix of patient narratives, Gold’s personal experience, and research data that support the prior 2. Gold, who primarily works with health care professionals, dives into the stories of 4 patients who work at different levels of the health care system and explores how the pandemic affects their mental health. While doing so, Gold also turns the focus inward and lets us enter her inner world during the height of isolation. She reflects on the transition to telehealth, and the unbearable stress of caring for those taking care of others during one of the most difficult times in our recent history.

Over and over, the author asks “how do you feel?” to the patients and herself, realizing that perhaps she has been ignoring her own wellbeing while focusing too intensely on work. The book also explores medicine’s attitudes about emotions in general and their place in patient care. The book transitions seamlessly between patient stories and Gold’s story. The patient stories are written for a lay audience, explaining why a psychiatrist might ask certain questions or how a psychiatrist might draw a patient out. Gold’s story is woven into the book in 2 ways. First, the experience of a patient reminds Gold of something in her own history which she then reflects on. Interestingly, at other times the story is told with herself as the patient through sessions with her own therapist.

Throughout the book, Gold reflects on what it means to be a “product of medicine” and her experience of being hardened by being taught to stay away from emotions in medical training. She gives multiple examples of herself or other doctors in training being reprimanded for showing acts of kindness to patients. In one example, her patient shares a story of a nauseated and vomiting health care worker grabbing a banana bag and using it to rehydrate themselves while dragging an intravenous (IV) pole from room to room to see patients. Reading her experience brought out my own feelings of sadness and empathy for such a harsh training experience. During my time in medical school, humanism in medicine was central to my curriculum. I was taught that compassion and self-reflection (which leads to deeper compassion) were core to the art of medicine. Gold finished her medical training relatedly recently, so it was eye opening to read of the unsympathetic experiences she describes that were reminiscent of medical training stories of an earlier time. She also reflects on the stigma associated with seeking mental health treatment among health care workers and medicine’s attitude of pushing forward, no matter the cost.

In the end, despite Gold’s toxic medical training, she finds humanism after all in the stories of her patients and strength in accessing her own emotions. As she invites her patients to seek the strength in their vulnerability, she does the same in her personal therapy work. The book asks us to pause and reflect on the medical training experiences that have shaped us. It urges us to feel with our patients, and most importantly, to not run from what comes up.

Dr Zahir is a psychiatrist based in New York City.