The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
Angelo Volandes
Bloomsbury Press
Angelo Volandes, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, has written a book illustrating the power of honest discussion among doctors, patients and families as they establish treatment goals while avoiding procedures that cause more harm than good. His hope is to close the gap between the care people want at the end of life and the care they actually receive.
Two-thirds of Americans die in healthcare institutions tethered to machines and tubes at bankrupting costs, despite research that shows 80 percent of Americans would prefer to spend their last days in their homes surrounded by their loved ones. Volandes says the solution to unnecessary suffering is not more technology but the most effective, powerful and empathetic tool a doctor can offer: conversation.
The Conversation recounts the stories of seven patients confronting different end-of-life questions. The book also offers information and online resources that include helpful language for family members and physicians as well as instructions for navigating living wills and advance directives.
The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults
Frances E. Jensen with Amy Ellis Nutt
HarpersCollins Publishers
In her new book, Frances Jensen, HMS professor of neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital, explains the science of brain development and offers a guide to navigating the perilous territory of a teenage brain.
Driven by the assumption that brain growth was pretty much complete by the time a child began kindergarten, scientists believed for years that the adolescent brain was essentially an adult one—only with fewer miles on it. Over the last decade, however, the scientific community has learned that the teen years encompass vitally important stages of brain development.
Motivated by her personal experience as the mother of two teenage boys, Jensen gathers recent discoveries about adolescent brain function, wiring and capacity. She also dispels commonly held myths about the teenage years and explores adolescent brain function and development in the contexts of learning and multitasking, stress and memory, sleep, addiction and decision-making.
The Teenage Brain sheds light on the brains—and behaviors—of adolescents and young adults, sharing specific ways in which parents, educators and even the legal system can help them navigate their way more smoothly into adulthood.
Information Technology for Patient Empowerment in Healthcare
Maria Adela Grando, Ronen Rozenblum and David W. Bates
De Gruyter
Edited by two HMS faculty members, the book seeks to engage patients and their families in new and innovative ways to support the management of their own health. One of the first books to focus on the intersection of health information technology, patient engagement and patient empowerment, it consists of contributions by 41 authors, including Ronen Rozenblum, HMS instructor in medicine and director of the Unit for Innovative
Healthcare Practice & Technology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and David W. Bates, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's.
The other contributors are patients, family members and patient advocates; renowned clinicians, healthcare organization leaders and top industry managers; policymakers; researchers from major universities around the world; and information technology experts.
The book offers a 360-degree perspective on information technology for patient empowerment. Leading figures discuss the existing needs, challenges and opportunities for improving patient engagement and empowerment through health information technology, mapping out what has been accomplished and what work remains to truly transform the care that professionals deliver and to deeply engage patients in their care.
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