Jauhar’s older brother, Rajiv, also a cardiologist, in urging Dr. He reluctantly accepts subsidy from his father-in-law, who joins Sonia and Dr. The baby has precluded Sonia from working, and his LIJ salary does not meet the family’s budget, even though they live in a tiny apartment. Jauhar’s overarching nemesis is financial stress. Jauhar cites the way physicians treat his father to illustrate what he considers poorly coordinated and inappropriate applications of medical technology that encourage “diagnosis at a distance.” Suspected of having a stroke, his father is subjected to a range of sophisticated tests, only for a nurse to at last identify the problem as a pinched nerve.īut Dr. (Fortunately, the outcome is a healthy baby boy.) He also wrestles with his family relationships, particularly with his father, whom he describes as an overbearing, irascible and unfulfilled academic, though now in saddening physical decline.

Medical complications beset his physician wife Sonia’s first pregnancy, and the couple endures a power struggle with her obstetrician over how to deal with them.

The author’s personal life exacerbates the stress of his practice. Sandeep Jauhar discusses his book on Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero. A new memoir, ‘Doctored,’ presents one cardiologist’s take on the challenges facing American medicine and the real impact on patient care. What happens when doctors are unhappy? They have unhappy patients. Jauhar erroneously diagnoses a less serious condition. The one exception is that of a young physician who suffers an unnecessary heart attack due to a blocked artery, because Dr. Most of the stories he tells about patients end in death.

He rankles at having to bicker with insurance functionaries to approve treatments he believes his patients need. He encounters agonizing situations, such as referring physicians demanding that he apply expensive, invasive and useless remedies and terminally ill patients asking in vain to forgo treatment. His job at LIJ is to run a program for treating patients with the very common condition of heart failure, the enfeeblement of the organ’s blood-pumping function, causing fatigue, shortness of breath, leg swelling and early death.Īfter a brief moment of euphoria at finishing his arduous training, Dr. Heart specialist Sandeep Jauhar’s book, “Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician” is a highly engaging and disarmingly candid account of his first five years after completing his training and beginning work at New York’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

Sandeep jauhar books