As a writer I have always been interested in the brain/mind connection. As an editor, I was always trying to find the point at which editing becomes writing. And finally, since working on Modern Medicine: What You’re Dying to Know, my interest has become more often healthcare, especially the art of medicine, the experience of physicians which leads to their expertise. An expertise which cannot be captured by checkboxes and electronic medical records.
Artificial intelligence has long studied the difference between novices and experts in their quest to build expert systems. Attempts to replicate physician expertise with checklists have failed abysmally. But studies of novice vs. expert behavior tells us why. There is no greater misunderstanding of the art of the physician than the government’s compulsion to try to measure quality of care with medical checklists.
I’ve listed the books here in no particular order, with links to Amazon and any book reviews I have done.
The Form Within: My Point of View
Coyote Medicine: Lessons from Native American Healing
Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain: Why Medication Isn’t Enough
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
The Insanity of Normality: Realism As Sickness : Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer
Bonfire of the Humanities: Television, Subliteracy, and Long-Term Memory Loss (Television and Popular Culture)
The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (MIT Press)
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought
English with Ease: Mastering the Basic Ingredients of English
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
When Breath Becomes Air