Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing

"Wonderful... Physicans would do well to learn this most important lesson about caring for patients." —The New York Times Book Review
 
Over the years that Victoria Sweet has been a physician, “healthcare” has replaced medicine, “providers” look at their laptops more than at their patients, and costs keep soaring, all in the ruthless pursuit of efficiency. Yet the remedy that economists and policy makers continue to miss is also miraculously simple. Good medicine takes more than amazing technology; it takes time—time to respond to bodies as well as data, time to arrive at the right diagnosis and the right treatment.
 
Sweet knows this because she has learned and lived it over the course of her remarkable career. Here she relates unforgettable stories of the teachers, doctors, nurses, and patients through whom she discovered the practice of Slow Medicine, in which she has been both pioneer and inspiration. Medicine, she helps us to see, is a craft and an art as well as a science. It is relational, personal, even spiritual. To do it well requires a hard-won wisdom that no algorithm can replace—that brings together “fast” and “slow” in a truly effective, efficient, sustainable, and humane way of healing. 

• God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
• God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
• Medical Humanities: An Introduction
• Hildegard of Bingen's Medicine (Folk Wisdom Series)
• Healing with Form, Energy, and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen
• Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer
• Why we revolt: A patient revolution for careful and kind care
• Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness, and Humanity
• The Language of Kindness: A Nurse's Story
• The Compassionate Connection: The Healing Power of Empathy and Mindful Listening