Let Me Heal: The Opportunity to Preserve Excellence in American Medicine

by Kenneth M. Ludmerer

In Let Me Heal, prize-winning author Kenneth M. Ludmerer provides the first-ever account of the residency system for training doctors in the United States. He traces its development from its nineteenth-century roots through its present-day struggles to cope with new, bureaucratic work-hour regulations for house officers and, more important, to preserve excellence in medical training amid a highly commercialized health care system.

Let Me Heal provides a highly engaging, richly contextualized account of the residency system in all its dimensions. It also brilliantly analyzes the mutual relationship between residency education and patient care in America. The book shows that the quality of residency training ultimately depends on the quality of patient care that residents observe, but that there is much that residency training can do to produce doctors who practice in a better, more affordable fashion.

Let Me Heal is both a stunning work of scholarship and a highly engaging account of how one becomes a doctor in the United States. It is indispensable reading for those who wish to understand what it means to learn and practice medicine and what is needed to make medical education and patient care in America better. The definitive work on the subject, it is destined to become a classic that will be consulted by readers far into the future.

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