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(166 reviews)
Author: Victoria Sweet
ISBN : 1594486549
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Format: PDF
Free download Free God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine [Paperback] from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
A medical “page-turner” that traces one doctor’s “remarkable journey to the essence of medicine” (The San Francisco Chronicle).
San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God’s hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves—“anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times” and needed extended medical care—ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for twenty years.
Laguna Honda, relatively low-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished. Gradually, the place transformed the way she understood her work. Alongside the modern view of the body as a machine to be fixed, her extraordinary patients evoked an older idea, of the body as a garden to be tended. God’s Hotel tells their story and the story of the hospital itself, which, as efficiency experts, politicians, and architects descended, determined to turn it into a modern “health care facility,” revealed its own surprising truths about the essence, cost, and value of caring for the body and the soul.
Direct download links available for Free God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
- Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (April 2, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1594486549
- ISBN-13: 978-1594486548
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Free God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
"God's Hotel" is the true story of an internal medicine physician and her experiences at Laguna Honda Hospital, a place where doctors aren't constrained by the economic stressors of practicing modern medicine. Patients often stayed for months at a time, as their medical problems were addressed by looking at all facets of their being, not just lab results or x-rays. Her book describes in wonderful detail the concept of "slow medicine," where doctors and nurses write their chart notes longhand and have the time to review all aspects of their patients' health, without worrying about the three patients in exam rooms still waiting to see them. Whereas current medical administrators may consider this idea archaic and unrealistic, the stories of the many patients who benefitted from this methodical, holistic approach to treating patients are truly moving and affecting.
Unfortunately, Laguna Honda eventually succumbs to the pressures of modern medicine, as "Heath Care Efficiency Experts" are hired to come in and make the place more profitable and efficient. While they help make the hospital shinier and more modern, the care of the patients suffers, and this old-fashioned, loving approach to practicing medicine finally disappears altogether. Dr. Sweet writes about these changes in a sobering tone, yet it's a testament to her writing skills that the reader is always infused with hope.
This past year has been great for fans of this medical memoirs, so if you like this book I'd recommend two others that would serve as great companions.
In Stitches is an immensely entertaining read about one doctor's journey through medical school.
Dr. Sweet's memoir, like her diagnoses of some of her patients, has multiple independet but interacting parts. In part it is about her work in San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital, a public facility which is a direct intellectual descendent of the medieval almshouse. The second part is her study of the medical writings of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century Germany nun(and abbess) better known for her mystical religious writings. The third strain, which appears towards the end of the book, is about how her experiences walking the Santiago de Compestela pilgrmage in Spain, changed her thinking. As the descendent of an almshouse, Laguna Honda is now a very rare institution in the United States. Basically it has served (this may change) as a free, public hospital for those with chronic conditions. The emphasis on caring for people who aren't likely to get better distinguishes Laguna Honda from the public county hospital in San Francisco, which is supposed to treat acute conditions, after which if need be the patients will be transferred to Laguna Honda. Although Laguna Honda does have many patients with drug abuse problems and mental illnesses, it is not set up (no locked wards, etc.) to deal with violent or severely mentally ill people
The characterization of Lunga Honda as a hospital for the chronically ill may not hold true in the future. In conjunction with the completion of a new building in the last couple of years, Laguna Honda may become a facility focusing on the mentally ill and homeless, though the new building was not designed with those patients in mind.