Request to Join
has invited you to join this group
In his acclaimed memoir Intern, Sandeep Jauhar chronicled the harrowing, formative years of his residency at a prestigious New York City hospital. Doctored is his dramatic followup, a memoir that presents the crisis of American medicine through the life of an attending cardiologist.
Hoping for the stability he needs to start a family, Jauhar accepts a position at a massive teaching hospital on the outskirts of Queens. With a decade's worth of elite medical training behind him, he is keen to settle down and reap the rewards for countless sleepless nights. Instead, he is confronted with sobering truths: doctors’ morale is low and getting lower, and when doctors are unhappy, their patients are apt to be unhappy as well. He sees naked cronyism determining patient referrals, industry partnerships distorting medical decisions, and unnecessary tests being routinely performed in order to generate income. Meanwhile, a single patient in his hospital might see fifteen specialists in one stay, fail to receive a full picture of his actual condition, and leave with a bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Outraged at the state of his profession and troubled by patients’ undue suffering, Jauhar fights to keep his ideals intact. But Jauhar too finds himself ensnared in the system. Tormented by a mid-life crisis, and trying to make ends meet, he resorts to moonlighting for a profit-driven private practice that orders batteries of tests just to drum up fees and ward off malpractice lawsuits.
Provoked by his unsettling experiences, Jauhar has written an introspective memoir that is also an impassioned plea for reform. With American medicine at a crossroads, Doctored is the important work of a writer unafraid of challenging the establishment, admitting fault, and inciting controversy.