Uncaring How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients

Doctors are taught how to cure people. But they don’t always know how to care for them.

Hardly anyone is happy with American healthcare these days. Patients are getting sicker and going bankrupt from medical bills. Doctors are burning out and making dangerous mistakes. Both parties blame our nation’s outdated and dysfunctional healthcare system. But that’s only part of the problem.

In this important and timely book, Dr. Robert Pearl shines a light on the unseen and often toxic culture of medicine. Today’s physicians have a surprising disdain for technology, an unhealthy obsession with status, and an increasingly complicated relationship with their patients. All of this can be traced back to their earliest experiences in medical school, where doctors inherit a set of norms, beliefs, and expectations that shape almost every decision they make, with profound consequences for the rest of us.

Uncaring draws an original and revealing portrait of what it’s actually like to be a doctor. It illuminates the complex and intimidating world of medicine for readers, and in the end offers a clear plan to save American healthcare.

Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group. Named one of Modern Healthcare's 50 most influential physician leaders, Pearl is a clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and is on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses on strategy and leadership, and lectures on information technology and health care policy. He is the author of the Washington Post bestseller Mistreated, hosts the popular podcast Fixing Healthcare, publishes a newsletter with over 10,000 subscribers, and is a regular contributor to Forbes. He has been featured on CBS This Morning, CNBC, NPR, and in TIME, USA Today and Bloomberg News, and is a frequent keynote speaker at healthcare and medical technology conferences.