"The strength of the book lies in personal stories and stories (conversations) about how to interact with other doctors, health professionals, and patients, both face to face and using the Internet. The detailed table of contents at the beginning will help the reader decide which chapters to read and in which order. [...] The book caters to a wide range of readers, from physicians, other health personnel, patients, other academics, and interested lay readers. The editors are to be congratulated on their work and the publishers for their high standards."
– P. Ravi Shankar, MD, KIST Medical College in Lalitpur, Nepal. The Pharos (Autumn 2011).
As doctor-driven medicine sinks into disreputable old age, user-driven medicine is the hope of the future. This transition is already taking place across the world, and doctors and other health professionals should welcome it and play a creative role in shaping it. This book is a beginning in that process: a collecting together of materials, of stories, of insights, of ways of thinking, of problems and potential solutions, from users (patients" - a word which needs to disappear) and from health professionals. A new kind of shared health care will emerge out of the current chaos not by the imposition of a single will, but through the shaping that emerges spontaneously from the creative efforts of many individuals and many different forces. The unprecedented privilege of our time is that we can each participate in this on a global scale, and this book is one illustration of how this process can get started."
– Richard Lehman, Oxford University, UK
... A global group of contributors working in communication, public health, medicine, mental health, education, and other fields, as well as patients themselves, discuss how patients are joining networks, locating other patients or professionals, and exchanging narratives of their experiences in healthcare, and how this is improving outcomes in healthcare in areas like hematology, gastroenterology, and chronic disease. They also relate how different factors influence doctors and inform their understanding of the patient narrative, and how tools like patient records can be used. ...
– Sci Tech Book News, BookNews.com
Overall, this book covers an important subject and introduces readers to a variety of topics within the broad areas of narrative medicine and user-driven healthcare.
– Lisa Ennis, MA, MS, University of Alabama at Birmingham. Doody's Book Review .