Doctor Tales

About the Book

Stories about American healthcare have been told in print, on film, on television and radio, and in every form imaginable. The story of American healthcare, however, has never been told in quite the same way as in Dr. Blair Beebe's Doctor Tales. Through lyrical and compelling narrative, Dr. Beebe uses fourteen tales to tell his story of how our healthcare structure evolved to become the most advanced, and problematic, system in the world. Beginning with the viewpoint of an impressionable twenty-one-year-old first-year medical student, he continues with numerous patient encounters in hospital settings, and ends with a fictional community's response to an avian influenza epidemic transposed from a real outbreak in the Far East. Doctor Tales draws from the lives of real doctors, nurses, and patients to show the changes that have occurred during the second half of the twentieth century that have led to spectacular new treatments, and equally stunning shortfalls in healthcare.

About the Author

Blair Beebe, M.D. was a former associate executive director of The Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente, and physician-in-chief of Kaiser Foundation Hospital, San Jose, California. He is board certified in internal medicine, a fellow in the American College of Physicians, and a former clinical faculty member at Stanford University.