Background
Cassell, Eric Jonathan was born on August 29, 1928 in New York City. Son of Hyman William and Anne (Lake) Goldstein.
(American medicine attracts some of the brightest and most...)
American medicine attracts some of the brightest and most motivated people the country has to offer, and it boasts the most advanced medical technology in the world, a wondrous parade of machines and techniques such as PET scans, MRI, angioplasty, endoscopy, bypasses, organ transplants, and much more besides. And yet, writes Dr. Eric Cassell, what started out early in the century as the exciting conquest of disease, has evolved into an overly expensive, over technologized, uncaring medicine, poorly suited to the health care needs of a society marked by an aging population and a predominance of chronic diseases. In Doctoring: The Nature of Primary Care Medicine, Dr. Cassell shows convincingly how much better fitted advanced concepts of primary care medicine are to America's health care needs. He offers valuable insights into how primary care physicians can be better trained to meet the needs of their patients, both well and sick, and to keep these patients as the focus of their practice. Modern medical training arose at a time when medical science was in ascendancy, Cassell notes. Thus the ideals of science--objectivity, rationality--became the ideals of medicine, and disease--the target of most medical research--became the logical focus of medical practice. When clinicians treat a patient with pneumonia, they are apt to be thinking about pneumonia in general--which is how they learn about the disease--rather than this person's pneumonia. This objective, rational approach has its value, but when it dominates a physician's approach to medicine, it can create problems. For instance, treating chronic disease--such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, stroke, emphysema, and congestive heart failure--is not simply a matter of medical knowledge, for it demands a great deal of effort by the patients themselves: they have to keep their doctor appointments, take their medication, do their exercises, stop smoking. The patient thus has a profound effect on the course of the disease, and so for a physician to succeed, he or she must also be familiar with the patient's motivations, values, concerns, and relationship with the doctor. Many doctors eventually figure out how to put the patient at the center of their practice, but they should learn to do this at the training level, not haphazardly over time. To that end, the training of primary care physicians must recognize a distinction between doctoring itself and the medical science on which it is based, and should try to produce doctors who rely on both their scientific and subjective assessments of their patients' overall needs. There must be a return to careful observational and physical examination skills and finely tuned history taking and communication skills. Cassell also advocates the need to teach the behavior of both sick and well persons, evaluation of data from clinical epidemiology, decision making skills, and preventive medicine, as well as actively teaching how to make technology the servant rather than the master, and offers practical tips for instruction both in the classroom and in practice. Most important, Doctoring argues convincingly that primary care medicine should become a central focus of America's health care system, not merely a cost-saving measure as envisioned by managed care organizations. Indeed, Cassell shows that the primary care physician can fulfill a unique role in the medical community, and a vital role in society in general. He shows that primary care medicine is not a retreat from scientific medicine, but the natural next step for medicine to take in the coming century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195113233/?tag=2022091-20
( Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and th...)
Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool in medicine, and, according to Dr. Cassell, "we must be as precise with it as a surgeon with a scalpel." In these two volumes, he analyzes doctor-patient communication and shows how doctors can use language for the maximum benefit of their patients. Throughout, Dr. Cassell stresses that patients are complex, changing, psychological, social and physical beings whose illnesses are well represented by their own communication. He proposes that both listening and speaking are arts that can be learned best when they are based on the way that spoken language functions in medicine.Accordingly, Volume I focuses on the workings of spoken language in the clinical setting. It analyzes such important aspects of speech as paralanguage (non-word phenomenon like pause, pitch, and speech rate), how patients describe themselves and their illnesses, the logic of conversation, and the levels of meanings of words.Volume II is a practical, detailed, how to guide that demonstrates the process of history taking and how the doctor can learn the most from the information that the patient has to offer. His arguments are amply illustrated in both volumes by transcripts of real interactions between patients and their doctors.Eric J. Cassell, M.D., an internist and clinical director of the Program for the Study of Ethics and Values in Medicine at Cornell Medical School, is widely recognized in the medical field for his contributions to communications in medicine and for his writings on ethics. Talking With Patients is the result of more than ten years of research. His first book, The Healer's Art, has achieved the status of an underground classic.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530562/?tag=2022091-20
(This is a revised and expanded edtion of a classic in pal...)
This is a revised and expanded edtion of a classic in palliative medicine, originally published in 1991. With three added chapters and a new preface summarizing our progress in the area of pain management, this is a must-hve for those in palliative medicine and hospice care. The obligation of physicians to relieve human suffering stretches back into antiquity. But what exactly, is suffering? One patient with metastic cancer of the stomach, from which he knew he would shortly die, said he was not suffering. Another, someone who had been operated on for a mior problem--in little pain and not seemingly distressed--said that even coming into the hospital had been a source of pain and not suffering. With such varied responses to the problem of suffering, inevitable questions arise. Is it the doctor's responsibility to treat the disease or the patient? And what is the relationship between suffering and the goals of medicine? According to Dr. Eric Cassell, these are crucial questions, but unfortunately, have remained only queries void of adequate solutions. It is time for the sick person, Cassell believes, to be not merely an important concern for physicians but the central focus of medicine. With this in mind, Cassell argues for an understanding of what changes should be made in order to successfully treat the sick while alleviating suffering, and how to actually go about making these changes with the methods and training techniques firmly rooted in the doctor's relationship with the patient. Dr. Cassell offers an incisive critique of the approach of modern medicine. Drawing on a number of evocative patient narratives, he writes that the goal of medicine must be to treat an individual's suffering, and not just the disease. In addition, Cassell's thoughtful and incisive argument will appeal to psychologists and psychiatrists interested in the nature of pain and suffering.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195156161/?tag=2022091-20
(THE PATHS TO THE PRESENT This book comes at a turning poi...)
THE PATHS TO THE PRESENT This book comes at a turning point in the history of medicine. It is a time, we believe, when the profession has begun to direct its attention away from an almost exclusive concern with the body and is again focusing on the sick person. The history of medicine is a story of changing customs and costumes, instruments and methods, explanations and theories. Throughout runs the common thread of attempts to understand what makes people sick and through that understanding to make them well again. We titled this book Changing Values in Medicine, but a better name might have been Enduring Values in Medicine, for no sickness can be known apart from an appreciation of both the body and the person. It is strange that it should ever have seemed otherwise. Yet present-day disease concepts, despite their obvious utility, are conspicuous for their impersonality.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FA4FF06/?tag=2022091-20
( Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and th...)
Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool in medicine, and, according to Dr. Cassell, "we must be as precise with it as a surgeon with a scalpel." In these two volumes, he analyzes doctor-patient communication and shows how doctors can use language for the maximum benefit of their patients. Throughout, Dr. Cassell stresses that patients are complex, changing, psychological, social and physical beings whose illnesses are well represented by their own communication. He proposes that both listening and speaking are arts that can be learned best when they are based on the way that spoken language functions in medicine.Accordingly, Volume I focuses on the workings of spoken language in the clinical setting. It analyzes such important aspects of speech as paralanguage (non-word phenomenon like pause, pitch, and speech rate), how patients describe themselves and their illnesses, the logic of conversation, and the levels of meanings of words.Volume II is a practical, detailed, how to guide that demonstrates the process of history taking and how the doctor can learn the most from the information that the patient has to offer. His arguments are amply illustrated in both volumes by transcripts of real interactions between patients and their doctors.Eric J. Cassell, M.D., an internist and clinical director of the Program for the Study of Ethics and Values in Medicine at Cornell Medical School, is widely recognized in the medical field for his contributions to communications in medicine and for his writings on ethics. Talking With Patients is the result of more than ten years of research. His first book, The Healer's Art, has achieved the status of an underground classic.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530554/?tag=2022091-20
(Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and ther...)
Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool in medicine, and, according to Dr. Cassell, "we must be as precise with it as a surgeon with a scalpel." In these two volumes, he analyzes doctor-patient communication and shows how doctors can use language for the maximum benefit of their patients. Throughout, Dr. Cassell stresses that patients are complex, changing, psychological, social and physical beings whose illnesses are well represented by their own communication. He proposes that both listening and speaking are arts that can be learned best when they are based on the way that spoken language functions in medicine. Accordingly, Volume I focuses on the workings of spoken language in the clinical setting. It analyzes such important aspects of speech as paralanguage (non-word phenomenon like pause, pitch, and speech rate), how patients describe themselves and their illnesses, the logic of conversation, and the levels of meanings of words. Volume II is a practical, detailed, how to guide that demonstrates the process of history taking and how the doctor can learn the most from the information that the patient has to offer. His arguments are amply illustrated in both volumes by transcripts of real interactions between patients and their doctors. Eric J. Cassell, M.D., an internist and clinical director of the Program for the Study of Ethics and Values in Medicine at Cornell Medical School, is widely recognized in the medical field for his contributions to communications in medicine and for his writings on ethics. Talking With Patients is the result of more than ten years of research. His first book, "The Healer's Art, has achieved the status of an undergroundclassic.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262031116/?tag=2022091-20
Cassell, Eric Jonathan was born on August 29, 1928 in New York City. Son of Hyman William and Anne (Lake) Goldstein.
Bachelor, Queens College, 1950; Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1950; Doctor of Medicine, New York University, 1954; Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Medical College Pennsylvania, 1985.
Intern 3d medical division, Bellevue Hospital, New York City, 1954-1955;
assistant resident 3d medical division, Bellevue Hospital, New York City, 1955-1956, 58-59;
physician 3d, 4th medical division, Bellevue Hospital, New York City, 1965-1966;
United States Public Health Service trainee in infectious diseases, Cornell Univercity, New York City, 1959-1961;
clinical professor public health, Cornell Univercity, New York City, since 1971;
attending physician, French Hospital, New York City, 1961-1974;
associate attending physician, Mount Sinai (New York) Hospital, 1966-1971;
associate director ambulatory care, Community Medical, Mount Sinai, 1966-1968;
attending physician, New York Hospital, since 1984. Clinical associate professor medicine, New York University, 1965-1966, Mount Sinai Hospital, 1966-1971. Board directors Hasting's Center, Garrison, New York, since 1975.
Commissioner National Bioethics Advisory Commission, since 1997.
(American medicine attracts some of the brightest and most...)
( Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and th...)
(This is a revised and expanded edtion of a classic in pal...)
( Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and th...)
(Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and ther...)
(THE PATHS TO THE PRESENT This book comes at a turning poi...)
Served to captain Medical Corps, United States Army, 1956-1958. Master American College of Physicians. Fellow New York Academy of Medicine.
Member Institute Medicine of NAS.
Married Joan M. Fishman. October 17, 1957 (divorced 1987). Children: Justine, Stephen.
Married Patricia M. Owens, May 26, 1990.