Surviving Your Doctors: Why the Medical System is Dangerous to Your Health and How to Get through it Alive »

Richard S. Klein, M.D., is a practicing physician specializing in internal medicine and infectious diseases. An associate professor of medicine, Dr. Klein also teaches at New York Medical College. He is the author of From Anecdote to Antidote.

Every year, 90,000 patients die in our American hospitals due to medical error. The price to individuals, families, and society at large is in the billions, and yet wrongful medical outcomes are often swept under the rug. Patients need to know how to avoid medical blunders from the minute they step foot in their doctor's office or hospital. This book, written from an insider's perspective, walks readers through the potential hazards of healthcare and offers guidance for how to avoid injury or worse.

Publishers Weekly

With at least 100,000 hospital patients dying each year, associate professor and practicing internist Klein (From Anecdote to Antidote) calls medical malpractice in the U.S. a "pandemic," with mortality numbers comparable to "smoking, auto accidents, and pollution," placing the U.S. behind most of Europe, "including Poland and the Czech Republic." While Klein supports universal healthcare modeled on Medicare, he asserts that we'll need more: "substandard or negligent care have been swept under the rug" by the medical profession for too long. As such, he insists that the medical profession needs "medical courts governed by specialists in medical ethics and respected physicians" to analyze mistakes and discipline offenders. Further, patients and their families must be empowered to become part of the "treating team," researching their own symptoms whenever possible and demanding proper screening, blood work, and second opinions. Klein offers anecdotes and examples from his own career with internal and infectious medicine, as well as his experience as an expert witness in malpractice litigation, in this useful, though somewhat diffuse, resource.
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