Death of the Good Doctor -- Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic

Doctor Kate Scannell abandoned her academic career in 1985 expecting to enter an "ordinary" medical practice in Northern California. Instead, the thirty-two-year-old physician found herself assigned to a county hospital AIDS ward where much of the medicine she has studied over many difficult years was rendered irrelevant. Working with AIDS patients, nearly all of whom are dying, Scannell discovers the inadequacy of the "good doctor" who battles illness to keep patients alive regardless of their suffering. By embracing her patients' unique needs and stories, Scannell reaches an expanded understanding of her patients and of herself as a physician. DEATH OF THE GOOD DOCTOR richly chronicles the intimacy of Scannell's relationships with her patients through whom the vast complexities of the AIDS epidemic are uniquely focused. It is through these beautiful, often difficult, and sometimes humorous portraits that the woman and the physician discover each other. * This haunting memoir is an important addition to the canon of AIDS literature. Scannell writes beautifully and with an insight that escapes most physicians. --Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone * Kate Scannell is the rare doctor who has been transformed by her patients. In this irresistible, informative, and enormously moving book, she tells us not only her own story, but theirs. --Gloria Steinem * When Kate Scannell began work with AIDS patients in 1985, her idea of a good doctor was one who saved lives, not lost them, one who used state-of-the-art technological intervention to battle disease no matter what the cost. Now, in an enormously moving, thoughtful and compassionate memoir, she recounts how she discarded her traditional medical training and learned how to rely on her own sensibilities... The individuals that she met on the ward, she writes, "shook me, stunned me, alarmed me, twisted me, righted me, tricked me, and amazed me." Their stories do the same for us, and some even make us laugh. -- Minneapolis Star/Tribune Originally published in paperback, 1999 (Cleis Press). Rights reverted to author in 2010 and reissued in electronic form; back in print 2012, and reissued with photographs in 2018.