To put patients and families at ease and to veer away from the use of Dr Google, neurology registrar at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH), Dr Sarah Holper wrote a book to help explain what exactly is going on with our bodies titled: What’s Wrong With You?
“The book is a guided tour around the human body, explaining how your body functions, but more importantly, the many and creative ways it can fail to result in your medical symptoms,” says Dr Holper.
The book is divided into different body systems, discussing symptoms ranging from headaches to fever, acne, reflux, and loss of taste and smell.
“Essentially it’s a crash course in medical school, without exams or long afternoons dissecting cadavers, but with all the insider information that us doctors get taught, plenty of weird medical history, trivia and patient anecdotes from my work as a doctor,” Holper adds.
Having worked at the RMH for over six years now, Dr Holper says it was during her internship she would often get paged to sit down with families and discuss the prognosis and treatment plan for their loved ones.
“I’ve always enjoyed giving patients explanations, seeing the moment of insight when they understand what’s actually wrong with them,” says the RMH registrar. “I thought it would be great if there was an entertaining book I could recommend to people like this who were interested in how their body worked. There wasn’t one – so I decided to write one.
“Unless you go to medical school, you are never really taught about how your body works and how it can fail.”
What’s Wrong With You? is now available in stores, online and as an audiobook in Australia, with release in the United Kingdom and United States to come in August.
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