Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing

Abstract

This book is written as a memoir and yet it is a story with a distinct moral lesson. Victoria Sweet traces her evolution as a physician, beginning with a formative experience as an undergraduate in which she was introduced to the work of Carl Jung. Inspired to go to medical school with the intent of becoming a Jungian therapist, she instead became enamored with the practice of internal medicine and chose a different route. As it would happen, she came of age as a physician during a time of turmoil in health care, when the emphasis on economy and efficiency diverted attention away from the relationship with and accountability to individual patients.The title of the book is a reference to the slow food movement, which started in Italy around the time Sweet was doing her residency. This movement, named for its opposition to fast food, proposed that the quality of ingredients and the process of creating meals warrants care and attention that is lost when the goal is to produce foods that can be obtained quickly, conveniently, and at low cost. Sweet describes her years as a medical student, intern, and resident as time spent mastering what she calls “fast medicine,” a version of doctoring that focuses on efficiency, application of technology, and preserving life. She notes frequently in the text that fast medicine has value in the larger scheme of health care; appropriate application of technology does in fact save lives.Sweet describes feeling drawn to what she calls slow medicine. In contrast to fast medicine, slow medicine focuses on seeing the patient in context, conducting a thorough physical examination, and implementing an individualized treatment plan that not only addresses disease but also promotes the patient’s own healing process. As Sweet gains more experience as a physician, and as economic and technological forces alter the delivery of health care, she arrives at the conclusion that slow and fast medicine can be practiced together in balance to produce the best patient care.I agree with the central message of Slow Medicine. An imbalance of fast medicine with too little of the slow version can be detrimental to the wellbeing of patients and to our ability to find meaning in the care we provide. At the same time, I did not always find a culprit in the semantics Sweet sought to correct. For instance, she finds the term health care provider off-putting because it suggests a business approach to her role. However, health care provider is useful in offering a succinct term for identifying multiple members of the health care team. I do see her point that when we call the people who care for others providers and the recipients of that care consumers, we risk missing the human connection in health care.Sweet’s reflections on her clinical experiences reinforce her values of slow medicine, and the experiences themselves are riveting and carry the book forward. She is a talented narrator and includes the right amount of detail to bring to life the patients and the situations they face. Her devotion to her patients is so strong that it goes beyond the care she provides, fueling her commitment to apply the lessons she learns.Slow Medicine is a smart, well-written book, with engaging anecdotes and a thoughtful lesson. Moreover, the narrator sounds like someone it would be interesting to work with, who would listen to others’ ideas and share her own on equal footing. This book is a valuable read for nurses and members of the community seeking human connection in the business that health care has become.