“…every patient, doctor in training, and practicing physician should read this book.”  – BERNIE SIEGEL, MD

“I’m a changed person from reading Doctor Confidential.” – Roger Jellinek, Executive Director, Hawaii Book and Music Festival

“The title and even the sub-title do not prepare or even give an adequate hint of the powerful stories that await you in this book. Since I had very little to guide my expectations about the book, I was totally unprepared for the touching but often brutally honest first person story of one man’s personal journey through medical school and residency. The book is a very compelling read. There were deep insights about life, illnesses and medicine and touching stories about birth, life and death….” Read More - John Chancellor,  Mentor Coach  www.teachthesoul.com

The author’s stories showed that compassion, humor and hardship do exist in the world of medicine. The book was written like a novel. Sometimes I feel that “nonfiction” books can be boring but that was not the case with this book. I could not put it down and when I was finished, I wanted more.The author is a wonderful writer and I cannot wait for book number two. If you are planning a career in medicine or just want a little more information on the world of medicine this is the book for you. So go on out and get a copy of the book. You will not be disappointed. – Eileen at  BooksRUsOnline.com

“Debates and political shenanigans abound as an attempt is made to improve health care in America. Daily breakthroughs in scientific advancements suggest that the unconquerable beast of disease and death is being diminished: daily articles about the high and ungainly costs of receiving medical care are eluding us. Internet and all media flood the public with news of hospital and physician errors that result in astoundingly long and expensive legal action, the monies from medical malpractice suits elevate the physicians insurance premiums, pad the pockets of lawyers and tickle down to patients, and we can only as ‘Why?’

Richard Sheff, MD in his book DOCTOR CONFIDENTIAL: SECRETS BEHIND THE VEIL offers more information and insights into this burgeoning problem than any other book that has arrived for the public to read….” Read More – Grady Harp

Blog and Reader/Member Review links below

• • Amazon Reader Reviews can be read here
• • CyberLibrarians Review can be read here
• • Doctor Pre Med Recommendation can be read here
• • LibraryThing member reviews can be read here
• • Blog Review by Amos Lassen review can be read here

More Review Excerpts…

I finished your book on the night you left Brazil.  I was truly held captive from beginning to end and, as I already shared with you, felt like I knew you intimately by the time I completed the book.  Thank you for sharing yourself and your story so generously.

The next day I purchased a second copy of the book and donated it to library at the inn I was staying in and inscribed it with an endorsement.  Two of the people at the inn began reading it immediately.  After I returned home I showed the book to a woman in a book club I belong to.  I gave her the book to read, upon her request, on Tuesday evening and when I came by her house this morning, Thursday, to help her with some errands, she was half way through the book and said she couldn’t put it down!  We both decided we are going to advocate for our book club to read it this coming year.

-Jan Briski

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If Dr. Sheff ever decides to leave medicine, he has a career waiting for him as a novelist. I can’t remember the last book I read – especially nonfiction – that kept me up half the night because I couldn’t put it down. In the following days, I deliberately slowed my reading pace – I didn’t want it to end.

Indeed, Doctor Confidential reads like a novel. I’m a great believer in the “show me, don’t tell me” school of thought when it comes to writing, and Dr. Sheff’s gift in this department shines on every page. This is not a book “about” medicine, “about” his years of training and residency. It’s a portal into the living experience of becoming a physician—on many levels—and it pulses with life on every page. Indeed, the same skills that make him an extraordinary physician come through in his writing – his eye for detail is uncanny, and his talent with dialogue betrays his keen observation and listening skills, as well as his tendency to pay attention to what’s going on around him (and within him). Though the stories are written in medical terminology, his numerous footnotes leave the lay reader feeling vastly more knowledgeable about many facets of medicine. I appreciated this.

Dr. Sheff is an exceedingly generous writer, not only in the scope and breadth of the stories and experiences he has offered here, but also in his courage to go so deep in sharing lessons learned the hard way. This poignant and captivating memoir is a testament to his passionate caring about the “noble but troubled” profession of medicine – a caring so vast that he holds nothing back. In a field where mistakes can cause others to suffer, even cost a life, it’s hard not to be moved by his willingness to be painstakingly honest about such dark and painful moments on the physician-in-training learning curve. Few share these truths. No one can go through the process of becoming a physician without receiving scars on the way. Because Dr. Sheff is one of those rare and wonderful writers who has the courage to offer his own journey in such loving depth, he shows how our scars can, without our even knowing it, shape our perceptions and decisions, but also how to keep from letting them define us too narrowly.

In this remarkable book, doctors will find a friend, lay readers will find the doctor they wish they had, but it’s medical students, interns and residents who are in a unique position to benefit the most from Dr. Sheff’s experiences. Like wise advice from an older brother, these stories may even serve to help them avoid some great pitfall (or at least remind them they’re in good company if the pitfall must become part of their own learning experience) Indeed, if it were in my power to make it happen, every medical student and intern in the country would wake up tomorrow morning with Doctor Confidential on their bedside table. Since medical culture is better adept at fostering isolation than connection, this angelic gesture would be my way of connecting them with a wise and caring ally. Too many physicians-in-training are understandably reluctant to share emotionally laden experiences, especially painful ones, and this leaves them feeling unnecessarily (and mistakenly) alone. This book would alleviate that problem, for there’s hardly an experience they could have that Dr. Sheff hasn’t faced and shared in this book – a blessed reminder that context is everything. The stories in Doctor Confidential might even serve as a preventive against physicians-in-training having their heart, spirit, ideals and/or humanity trained out of them.

How does it compare with other physician-authored books about life in medicine? Here’s my idea about that: If you kept the piercing insights of Shem’s House of God (minus the sexual escapades) but softened its dark, hard edges with the gentle loving wisdom found in Rachel Naomi Remen’s books, you’d have something close to Doctor Confidential You’d also like this book if you appreciated the need for human caring in medicine found in Transue’s On Call, the poetic sensibility of Danielle Ofri, or that perfect combination of science and philosophy you find in Oliver Sacks.

There are a number of books written by physicians about life in medicine. As a doctoral student researching the subjective experiences of doctors (I also come from a medical family), I’ve read many of them. Doctor Confidential is, quite simply, one of the very best. Indeed, I feel a great debt to this book – it not only raised the bar for me in what I want in a physician, it has made me less apologetic for wanting it, and more determined to keep looking until I find it. Such crucial qualities are not only essential to good medical care, they are intimately linked with health and well-being.

The greatest value in this book is in the story behind the story. On the surface, it is a story about medicine. But on a larger level, it’s about a journey from being knowledgeable to being wise. It’s also a beautiful reminder that wisdom is created in small moments, and in choices that confront us in our darkest moments. It’s one thing to admire wisdom; it’s another to acquire it. Doctor Confidential is packed with small dark moments, and the choices Dr. Sheff must make in each of them teach us as much about how to live as how to practice medicine. These lessons cannot be confined to medicine – they are life lessons.

In short, Doctor Confidential is the story of a physician blessed with a vast mind destined to learn that the practice of medicine is also very much about the heart. We are all the better because he didn’t refuse his destiny.

Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger’s famous literary character, sums up beautifully my feelings about Dr. Sheff’s book:

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much though.”

No, it doesn’t… so here’s hoping Dr. Sheff is already working on book number two!

- Elizabeth Thompson, M.A.

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