 | |
| Author | Shannon Brownlee |
|---|---|
| Subject | Unnecessary health care |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Publication date | 2007 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 342 |
| ISBN | 978-1-58234-580-2 |
| OCLC | 137325161 |
Overtreated - Why too much Medicine is Making us Sicker and Poorer is a 2007 book by Shannon Brownlee about unnecessary health care.
The reviewer for The New York Times said that the book was "the best description I have yet read of a huge economic problem that we know how to solve—but is so often misunderstood". [1] Kirkus Reviews described the work as "A bombshell of a book: must reading for consumers, their political representatives and all those White House contenders". [2] The reviewer for The Christian Science Monitor said that the author's conclusions in the book were "fascinating, counterintuitive, and potentially revolutionary". [3] A reviewer writing in a social work journal found the book's findings "insightful" and the examples given as "poignant". [4]
The book was reviewed in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association by Norton Hadler, who praised the arguments made, but criticized their quality and the lack of reliance on primary sources. [5] Shannon Doyle in American Journal of Medical Quality similarly praised the timeliness of the book and the detailed arguments, but noted that it the issue is not framed in a political context. [6] In Nursing Ethics , Clair Kaplannotes the extensive use of data in arguments, but was disappointed by the lack of information about nursing. [7]
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. ... [It] means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research." The aim of EBM is to integrate the experience of the clinician, the values of the patient, and the best available scientific information to guide decision-making about clinical management. The term was originally used to describe an approach to teaching the practice of medicine and improving decisions by individual physicians about individual patients.
Palliative care is an interdisciplinary medical caregiving approach aimed at optimizing quality of life and mitigating suffering among people with serious, complex, and often terminal illnesses. Within the published literature, many definitions of palliative care exist. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes palliative care as "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain, illnesses including other problems whether physical, psychosocial, and spiritual". In the past, palliative care was a disease specific approach, but today the WHO takes a broader patient-centered approach that suggests that the principles of palliative care should be applied as early as possible to any chronic and ultimately fatal illness. This shift was important because if a disease-oriented approach is followed, the needs and preferences of the patient are not fully met and aspects of care, such as pain, quality of life, and social support, as well as spiritual and emotional needs, fail to be addressed. Rather, a patient-centered model prioritizes relief of suffering and tailors care to increase the quality of life for terminally ill patients.
Stephen Joel Barrett is an American retired psychiatrist, author, co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), and the webmaster of Quackwatch. He runs a number of websites dealing with quackery and health fraud. He focuses on consumer protection, medical ethics, and scientific skepticism.
Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill is a 2002 book by medical journalist Robert Whitaker, in which the author examines and questions the efficacy, safety, and ethics of past and present psychiatric interventions for severe mental illnesses, particularly antipsychotics. The book is organized as a historical timeline of treatment development in the United States.
Uwe Ernst Reinhardt was a professor of political economy at Princeton University and held several positions in the healthcare industry. Reinhardt was a prominent scholar in health care economics and a frequent speaker and author on subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to the future of Medicare.
David Lawrence Sackett was an American-Canadian physician and a pioneer in evidence-based medicine. He is known as one of the fathers of Evidence-Based Medicine. He founded the first department of clinical epidemiology in Canada at McMaster University, and the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. He is well known for his textbooks Clinical Epidemiology and Evidence-Based Medicine.
Ezekiel Jonathan "Zeke" Emanuel is an American oncologist, bioethicist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is the current Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Previously, Emanuel served as the Diane and Robert Levy University Professor at Penn. He holds a joint appointment at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Wharton School and was formerly an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School until 1998 when he joined the National Institutes of Health.
John P. A. Ioannidis is a Greek-American physician-scientist, writer and Stanford University professor who has made contributions to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, and clinical research. Ioannidis studies scientific research itself, meta-research primarily in clinical medicine and the social sciences.
Lisa A. Cooper is an American internal medicine and public health physician who is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Equity in Health and Healthcare at Johns Hopkins University, jointly appointed in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and in the departments of Health, Behavior and Society, Health Policy and Management; Epidemiology; and International Health in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. Cooper is also a Gilman Scholar and a core faculty member in the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research. She is internationally recognized for her research on the impact of race, ethnicity and gender on the patient-physician relationship and subsequent health disparities. She is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In 2007, she received a MacArthur Fellowship.
Clinical peer review, also known as medical peer review is the process by which health care professionals, including those in nursing and pharmacy, evaluate each other's clinical performance. A discipline-specific process may be referenced accordingly.
Unnecessary health care is health care provided with a higher volume or cost than is appropriate. In the United States, where health care costs are the highest as a percentage of GDP, overuse was the predominant factor in its expense, accounting for about a third of its health care spending in 2012.
James Le Fanu is a British retired general practitioner, journalist and author, best known for his weekly columns in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. He is married to publisher Juliet Annan.
Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning us All into Patients is a 2005 book by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels about unnecessary health care.
The Treatment Trap - How the Overuse of Medical Care is Wrecking your Health and what you can do to Prevent it is a 2010 book by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh.
Health information on the Internet refers to all health-related information communicated through or available on the Internet.
Licit and Illicit Drugs: The Consumers Union Report on Narcotics, Stimulants, Depressants, Inhalants, Hallucinogens, and Marijuana–including Caffeine, Nicotine and Alcohol is a 1972 book on recreational drug use by medical writer Edward M. Brecher and the editors of Consumer Reports.
Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective is a book by American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell. It was originally published by Basic Books in 2015, with an updated version published in 2016. In the work, Sowell argues against the notion that economic equality is solely natural, and examines geographic, cultural, social, and political factors that have contributed to the wealth of groups and nations.
Fruits and Farinacea: The Proper Food of Man, Being an Attempt to Prove, from History, Anatomy, Physiology, and Chemistry, that the Original, Natural, and Best Diet of Man is Derived from the Vegetable Kingdom is an 1845 book advocating vegetarianism by John Smith.
Adam Seth Cifu is an American physician, academic, author, and researcher. He is Professor of Medicine and Director of Academic Programming at the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence at the University of Chicago.
Kaveh G. Shojania is a Canadian doctor, academic and an author. He is the vice chair of quality & innovation in the department of medicine at the University of Toronto as well as staff physician at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.