Medical School for Everyone

Enthralled!

Would you listen to Medical School for Everyone again? Why?

Actually, I've listened to it twice now and plan a third! I learn something new each time, and the professor's style is enjoyable and comfortable. Although the content is highly specialized and detailed, Dr. Benaroch is not the least bit pedantic, and he brings everything to life for the listener. I loved how, after a few chapters, I was anticipating his questions and "talking" along with him as he processed each patient's situation. It was such a thrill to catch myself blurting out the possible or probable diagnosis!

What did you like best about this story?

There are numerous "stories" in this set, each story being its own patient, set of symptoms, and discussion. It is impossible not to learn medical concepts while enjoying the stories. Dr. Benaroch starts out with a particular patient, but then branches out and discusses the bigger picture for each medical condition he covers.

Which scene was your favorite?

They are all equally enjoyable and fascinating.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me wish Dr.Benaroch was one of my "in network" docs.

Any additional comments?

I buy and listen to at least four Great Courses a year, and have for the past six years. This set is, by far, my most favorite set to date. I intend to re-listen to these lectures until I have them memorized!

44 of 46 people found this review helpful

Be a Medical Sherlock's Watson

‘Medical School for Everyone: Grand Rounds’ starts with a disclaimer which boils down to something sounding like “This course is not supposed to make you a medical doctor.” After such a disclaimer one might feel hesitant to continue listening, but I am glad that I did. The course’s actual aim is to make one a better patient by introducing you to the way doctors think and function to make a diagnosis. However I just bought it out of pure curiosity.

The course consists out of twenty four 30 minutes lectures by Prof. Roy Benaroch from Emory University School of Medicine where he specialised in Paediatrics. He seems to be well-known in the USA through his blog and his books ‘A Guide to Getting the Best Healthcare for Your Child’ and ‘Solving Health and Behavioral Problems from Birth Through Preschool: A Parent’s Guide.’ He also writes Science Fiction.

The listener is invited to imagine him-/herself to be a doctor that goes on rounds visiting various patients. You get the chance to be the sidekick of a sort of Medical Sherlock Holmes, thus you may be a highly opinionated Watson. By looking at different patients presenting diseases and using the steps doctors take to diagnose them, Prof. Benaroch introduces listeners to the world of a doctor as well as to many (mostly common) illnesses. For me the most interesting round was the Antarctic appendectomy on myself.

The course falls in the same category as Prof. Robert Garland’s course, “The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World,” in the sense that it use make-believe to make you understand important concepts. Prof. Benaroch has an excellent voice and it was quite easy to follow his lectures, though some of the medical terminology kept me at times in the dark.

I would recommend this course to anyone inclined to solve mysteries, thrive on puzzles and clues. While you will not be a qualified doctor hereafter, it can help you in understanding the framework within which doctors ‘operate.’ It comes highly recommended.

43 of 45 people found this review helpful

Such a great series, but lacked in some areas

Where does Medical School for Everyone rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Pretty well; Dr. Benaroch narrates two other audiobooks that I'm aware of, and I have listened to his "Medical School for Everyone: Emergency Medicine" series. I'm deeply fascinated by anything to do with medicine, nursing, and pre-hospital care, and this was a joy to listen to. So far it is the only audiobook I have listened to that has been able to present information in a way that serves both patient and professional, which, as I heard, was not the easiest thing to accomplish.

What does Professor Roy Benaroch bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His knowledge and passion were easily heard, and although he stumbled at a few points during his reading, it was laid back and enjoyable.

Any additional comments?

A few things, but some of which a non-medical affiliated person may not have even noticed-- first, (I suppose most appalling to me because I love advanced cardiac life support) Dr. Benaroch described a scenario in which a patient was brought to a trauma room, entered into asystole (flat line), and was shocked with a defibrillator unit. I terribly wished that he had not put that bit in, because that is not the protocol for a patient with asystole (plus it keeps circulating that myth around patients)-- the defibrillator unit delivers a shock that temporarily stops the heart in an effort to allow the heart's electrical conduction system to take over. In short, one can't stop a heart that's already stopped. Although it might not look as good on TV, the the team should have checked the leads, started CPR beginning with chest compressions until circulation was restored by checking pulses and monitoring the ECG, and gave epinephrine as soon as possible. I found it off-putting that the incorrect algorithm was followed. There are only two shockable rhythms: ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. However, I have heard of very rare cases where the patient has been in asystole for 20 minutes or so, and there are no other options left other than to shock, but that option is definitely not the first used.

Second, in 2010 the AHA changed the BLS primary survey sequence from ABC to CAB. Even so, the pediatric advanced life support (PALS) class I recently took noted the change but proceeded using the old guidelines (it may be because providers and other professionals were so used to ABC for so long that the change has met a bit of resistance).

Finally, I found it odd that, in two separate scenarios, he had strange comments regarding the blood pressures of two patients. There was a woman who had a systolic pressure in the 130's, and a man who had a systolic in the 160's. He sounded more urgent when he spoke of the woman with the 130 BP, and referred to it as "hypertensive", although hypertension (stage 1) starts with a systolic of 140-159, a diastolic of 90-99, or if the patient currently takes an anti-hypertensive medication. He was much more relaxed with the man whose systolic ran into the 160's, and that situation was just strange for me.

Most of the above is me nitpicking (although I stand firm by my first point-- that was not the correct way to approach asystole), but the series overall is excellent (even though I only gave it four stars), especially for patients.

13 of 13 people found this review helpful

Patients' Guide to Empowerment

If you could sum up Medical School for Everyone in three words, what would they be?

Educational equalizing empowering

What did you like best about this story?

These lectures enable any patient interested in understanding the process between physicians and their experiences - to communicate in a different way with medical professionals. This insight is invaluable. Enjoyment of the lectures, in part, comes from the case study story-telling approach. We can all relate to at least some of the patients in the stories. Medical knowledge is not a prerequisite. However with a little concentration anyone listening to these lectures will come away with knowledge that can change every encounter one has with doctors, and decisions.

What does Professor Roy Benaroch bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He has an obvious passion for teaching and for the "mystery" of successfully solving every patients' condition. At times he presents with so much excitement it is like listening to a mystery novel. Yet, as most good fictional novels do, these non-fiction lectures, educate, almost without the listener realizing so.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I simply enjoyed it. I garnered tools to improve communications in the medical arena. Certain recountings were very sad - some rather thrilling! Yet the point was, if only there had been earlier, more mutual communicating... Lessons? Patients be honest. Physicians care and be curious and lives can be saved.

Any additional comments?

"Sir William Osler M.D., said 'The good physician treats the disease. The great physician treats the patient who has the disease.' Cancer is a complex illness that can present in many ways.... Even when things turn bleak, there is always something a physician can do to help the patient - to help with comfort - to help ease a patient's journey, even when we cannot stop her disease."
--Roy Benaroch. M.D.Emory University School of Medicine

I spend time at Emory and know too many doctors frenetically working at Emory (and of course other facilities) who might want to spend some time back in the university, not teaching, but listening with the first year medical students to remember why they became doctors and how much they hold power to comfort or discourage, even fatally, every one of their patients.

11 of 11 people found this review helpful

Not just for the medical community........

Would you consider the audio edition of Medical School for Everyone to be better than the print version?

Yes. I felt like I was sitting in on a very enjoyable, informative lecture!

What did you like best about this story?

The "cases" were very interesting to me, as a nurse.

What does Professor Roy Benaroch bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The Dr's voice is wonderful. I would buy another of his lectures.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, but there is a lot of information. So I took it slowly, to enjoy.

19 of 20 people found this review helpful

Great .....Until The End!

Any additional comments?

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this lecture series. The speaker was clear and entertaining in his delivery and the cases were varied and interesting.However....I was incredibly enthusiastic about this series of lectures until the third-to-last and second-to-last cases where there were mistakes made that were so basic they made me question the accuracy of all the others (as a respiratory therapist, I'm really only familiar with respiratory diagnoses and tests, I have no idea how many mistakes were present in the non-lung cases!)

Errors were made, common ones though, concerning the diagnosis of the asthma patient (wrong sign, and wrong diagnostic tool). If lungs aren't your paycheck, you probably won't notice.

The really bad mistakes were made in the motorcycle patient. Protocols have changed recently, but not that recently. Because they encourage evidence-based medicine, the American Heart Association changed the ABC's almost 5 years ago but the lectures do not reflect that change. Worst of all, they shocked a flatline during the code. That is Hollywood, not real life. As far as I know, they have never done that in real life. The paddles are a fancy reset button, and just like you cannot reset a computer that is not plugged in, you cannot reset a heart that has no electrical activity. The lecturer had the chance to correct this major, MAJOR misconception but he just reinforced the myth. And that makes me sad. And obviously kinda irritated.

114 of 127 people found this review helpful

Definitely not "House, M.D."

This was a perfectly good series of lectures by an affable general practitioner talking about how doctors diagnose illnesses. He takes us through about a dozen case studies, based on real patients but with details altered or obscured, naturally. Most of the time, he puts us in an ER or doctor's office, presents us with a patient and his or her complaint, and then walks us through the things a doctor should do to get to the problem.

Along the way, Dr. Benaroch tries to educate the medical layman about a wide variety of medical issues, from proper terminology to myths about various illnesses and treatments, to how to be a good patient (and a good doctor).

The cases he presents run the spectrum, from a healthy woman whose mild complaint turns out to be terminal cancer, to a baby with unexplained tremors, to an unemployed teacher with "back pain" who turns out to be addicted to pain medication, to various other maladies ranging from mundane to rare.

This isn't "House" though - there are no bizarre or sensational cases, and not a lot of drama. Dr. Benaroch seems like a great doc you'd probably like to be seen by, and his talks are thorough and educational. You'll undoubtedly learn a few things unless you are a doctor yourself. The idea that you are doing virtual "Grand Rounds" yourself, though, is a bit of a pretense on the part of Great Courses, since obviously unless we know enough about the full spectrum of ailments to actually diagnose someone based on a few paragraphs of description (i.e., unless we are medical students), we probably will just have to listen along as the good doctor tells us what's ailing the patient. (In a few cases, I was able to make a correct guess, though.)

None of the cases are particularly exciting. They were chosen for educational value, not entertainment purposes, and that's a pretty good description of this Great Courses series - it's educational, and aimed at a fairly basic level, so not particularly entertaining. It's better for giving you a sense of how doctors do their work when first presented with a patient, and a few tips on how you can make your doctor's job easier (and maybe improve your own health), but it's not a book that deeply explores any medical issues or presents you with juicy and dramatic cases.

17 of 19 people found this review helpful

Professor Benaroch is fantastic

If you could sum up Medical School for Everyone in three words, what would they be?

Engaging, Entertaining, Fascinating

Any additional comments?

I thought this course would appeal mainly to hypochondriacs, but after all of those 5 Star reviews, I decided to listen. Well, it was terrific, intriguing, entertaining, informative. It flew by. It's structured almost like a series of fascinating mysteries, and Professor Benaroch is a great storyteller. The word "course" is almost unfair. Yes, it's a highly organized lecture series, and you learn a lot, but this could also be called a mystery series. I'm really looking forward to his next Great Course planned for 2016.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Fascinating and so informative!

This is another superb pick from The Great Courses. It is a wonderful introduction to the experience of Grand Rounds cases, designed for those considering a career in medicine and those who just want more information on health issues.

Each case includes the presenting complaint by the patient, the patient interview, follow-up test results, and lots of in-depth explanation on the particular health condition and the ins and outs of how a doctor would go about finding the correct diagnosis. In addition, treatment issues were discussed.

It appears to this layperson that Professor Benaroch really knows his stuff. He is a pediatrician but he covers patients of all ages in this lecture series. Additionally, I learned a great deal of helpful information about how to prepare for a doctor visit as the patient.

All in all, this was a great listen!

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Could save your life some day

The stories/cases are interesting but not great listen. However, what makes this book worthwhile is the description of how doctors make a diagnosis. After listening to this you will understand how the information you provide a doctor is critical in coming to the right conclusion. One of the key chapters was the woman who was sick, but neglected to tell her doctors she drank a bottle of gin every day, Eventually they figured out the truth and saved her life. Something you may not think of as relevant may be, and by telling your doctor it may save your life.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful