The Phoenix Doctors

At first sight, the following four real incidents that happened in India seem unrelated to each other. “Due to lack of oxygen supply, at least sixty infants allegedly die in a government hospital” – Gorakhpur, August 2017 “Treatment for Dengue infection costs Rs 15 Lakhs in a corporate hospital" – Gurugram, November 2017 “I want to become a heart specialist and offer free treatment to poor people” announces Twelfth standard exam topper – Odisha, June 2019. “Doctor brutally attacked and hospital vandalised by aggrieved relatives after patient in ICU dies”– Latur, July 2020 But the harsh reality is that they are very much inter-linked to one another. Somewhere between losing innocent children to lack of basic infrastructure, and shelling out huge sums in private medical behemoths, our healthcare system seems to have lost its way. Somewhere, between the transition of an exemplary student into an ethical doctor, to his killing by furious citizens, we have lost a noble soul. Who is at fault – the individual, the society or the system? This fictional story endeavours to identify the actual problems maligning our healthcare system. The Phoenix Doctors is a medical drama based on multiple, real life incidents. Karthik and Meera, the main protagonists, are intelligent, meritorious and empathetic doctors. The story takes us through their gruelling days of medical education and later their tenures in an inadequately maintained government hospital and a private multi-specialty hospital run by an industrialist. Unable to bear the avarice of the hospital’s administrators, they set out to start an affordable, high-quality healthcare initiative of their own. But do their noble intentions see the light of the day? How far would bureaucracy, red-tapism, and capitalism go to stymie their growth?

An unforgettable and inspiring memoir of an extraordinary doctor who is saving lives in a most unconventional way. Ask Me Why I Hurt is the touching and revealing first-person account of the remarkable work of Dr. Randy Christensen. Trained as a pediatrician, he works not in a typical hospital setting but, rather, in a 38-foot Winnebago that has been refitted as a doctor’s office on wheels. His patients are the city’s homeless adolescents and children. In the shadow of an affluent American city, Dr. Christensen has dedicated his life to caring for society's throwaway kids—the often-abused, unloved children who live on the streets without access to proper health care, all the while fending off constant threats from thugs, gangs, pimps, and other predators. With the Winnebago as his moveable medical center, Christensen and his team travel around the outskirts of Phoenix, attending to the children and teens who need him most. With tenderness and humor, Dr. Christensen chronicles everything from the struggles of the van’s early beginnings, to the support system it became for the kids, and the ultimate recognition it has achieved over the years. Along with his immense professional challenges, he also describes the trials and joys he faces while raising a growing family with his wife Amy. By turns poignant, heartbreaking, and charming, Dr. Christensen's story is a gripping and rich memoir of his work and family, one of those rare books that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

At first sight, the following four real incidents that happened in India seem unrelated to each other. "Due to lack of oxygen supply, at least sixty infants allegedly die in a government hospital" - Gorakhpur, August 2017 "Treatment for Dengue infection costs Rs 15 Lakhs in a corporate hospital" - Gurugram, November 2017"I want to become a heart specialist and offer free treatment to poor people" announces Twelfth standard exam topper - Odisha, June 2019. "Doctor brutally attacked and hospital vandalised by aggrieved relatives after patient in ICU dies"- Latur, July 2020 But the harsh reality is that they are very much inter-linked to one another. Somewhere between losing innocent children to lack of basic infrastructure, and shelling out huge sums in private medical behemoths, our healthcare system seems to have lost its way. Somewhere, between the transition of an exemplary student into an ethical doctor, to his killing by furious citizens, we have lost a noble soul. Who is at fault - the individual, the society or the system? This fictional story endeavours to identify the actual problems maligning our healthcare system. The Phoenix Doctors is a medical drama based on multiple, real life incidents. Karthik and Meera, the main protagonists, are intelligent, meritorious and empathetic doctors. The story takes us through their gruelling days of medical education and later their tenures in an inadequately maintained government hospital and a private multi-specialty hospital run by an industrialist. Unable to bear the avarice of the hospital's administrators, they set out to start an affordable, high-quality healthcare initiative of their own. But do their noble intentions see the light of the day? How far would bureaucracy, red-tapism, and capitalism go to stymie their growth?

Samuel Thomson, born in New Hampshire in 1769 to an illiterate farming family, had no formal education, but he learned the elements of botanical medicine from a "root doctor," who he met in his youth. Thomson sought to release patients from the harsh bleeding or purging regimens of regular physicians by offering inexpensive and gentle medicines from their own fields and gardens. He melded his followers into a militant corps of dedicated believers, using them to successfully lobby state legislatures to pass medical acts favorable to their cause. John S. Haller Jr. points out that Thomson began his studies by ministering to his own family. He started his professional career as an itinerant healer traveling a circuit among the small towns and villages of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Eventually, he transformed his medical practice into a successful business enterprise with agents selling several hundred thousand rights or franchises to his system. His popular New Guide to Health (1822) went through thirteen editions, including one in German, and countless thousands were reprinted without permission. Told here for the first time, Haller's history of Thomsonism recounts the division within this American medical sect in the last century. While many Thomsonians displayed a powerful, vested interest in anti-intellectualism, a growing number found respectability through the establishment of medical colleges and a certified profession of botanical doctors. The People's Doctors covers seventy years, from 1790, when Thomson began his practice on his own family, until 1860, when much of Thomson's medical domain had been captured by the more liberal Eclectics. Eighteen halftones illustrate this volume.

It is a natural assumption that authors who have published numerous scientific papers have also acquired mastery of the written word. Yet sadly this is not always the case. Talk to many journal editors and they will say that a number of the submissions they receive fail because an interesting finding has simply been presented in a poor way. The Cambridge Orthopaedic Writing Prize was created to allow freedom of written expression and to encourage trainees, authors, writers - call them what you will - to have fun, to play with their language and, at the same time, to compete. The end game, of course, is for the quality of scientific submissions to improve; for entrants to realise that you can influence a reviewer's judgment simply by improving the language and presentation of submitted research. There are no prizes for hopeless complexity. How can one expect a reviewer to focus on a paper that is badly written? Not a hope. Reviewers are human, too.For the 2013 prize, the judges were bowled over with the professionalism and content of the submissions. Each one, in their view, was utterly brilliant.

A biographical account of the life of Norman Bethune, detailing the story of his life including his career as a surgeon, his fight to eradicate tuberculosis, his commitment to establish a medicare system in Canada, and his communist ideologies, through considerable research and interviews with friends, family, former patients and colleagues.