How to Be a Patient

The Essential Guide to Navigating the World of Modern Medicine

By: Sana Goldberg

Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon

From registered nurse and public health advocate Sana Goldberg, RN, a timely, accessible, and comprehensive handbook to navigating common medical situations. From the routine to the unexpected, How to Be a Patient is your ultimate guide to better healthcare.

Did you know that patients have statistically better outcomes when their surgeon is female? That you can mark-up an informed consent sheet before you sign it, or get second opinions on CTs and MRIs? That there’s a blue book for healthcare procedures, or an algorithm to decide between ER, Urgent Care, and waiting-until-Monday?

In How to Be a Patient, nurse and public health advocate Sana Goldberg walks readers through the complicated and uncertain medical landscape, illuminating a path to better care.

Warm and disarmingly honest, Goldberg’s advice is as expert as it is accessible. In the face of an epidemic of brusque, impersonal care she empowers readers with the information and tools to come to good decisions with their providers and sidestep the challenging realities of modern medicine.

With sections like When All is Well, When It’s An Emergency, When It’s Your Person, and When You Have to Stand Up to the Industry, along with appendices to help track family history, avoid pointless medical tests, and choose when and where to undergo a procedure, How to Be a Patient is an invaluable and essential guide for a new generation of patients.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Painfully boring but full of good info

This is a very boring listen unless you are planning to be a doctor or a nurse one day, but it is also full of good information if you can just hang in there.

More like “How Being a Patient Should Be”

Listen, I’m progressive and I find the healthcare system complicated. The latter is why I got this book and it’s a very useful resource on the system. But with all this information is a slight leftist lean that is hard to ignore. You should definitely read the book if you are part of the US healthcare system but don’t come into this book unwarned

For everyone. Both sides of the stethescope

For patients, care givers, advocates, medical providers....a field guide to traveling through medical experiences, prevention/illness/recovery, etc. Complex and often serious issues addressed with enough quiet humor to make the read an easy one. Astute observations. Advice about looking at the patient-medical provider communication and relationship with a wide-angled lens. Highly recommend this book to patients and their families as well as the providers who interact with people at their most vulnerable moments.