Urologist-authored book seeks to educate patients on urologic issues

In this interview, urologist and author Martha Boone, MD, gives an overview of her new book, “The Unfettered Urologist.”

Transcription:

The book is partially a memoir. It's got some stories in there, things that happened to me and happened with patients. And of course, I took great care to honor everyone's HIPAA rights, so nobody can really tell themselves or what patient it is in there. There's some storytelling, which is my favorite thing to do. I'm also a nerdy little science person, so the chapters kind of go along with all the major topics in urology. I left some topics out like testicular cancer, because the information on that is moving so fast that I felt that by the time the book had been out a year, it would probably not be good information. So the things that I included were things that I felt like the field wasn't moving so quickly that people would need more updated information. I focus a lot on recurrent urinary tract infections, because that was something that I was commonly called about. I focused on kidney stone prevention, because that was something that I was commonly called about. The last part of the book is a little bit off the trail from conventional urology. It talks about things like meditation and using your intuition, and how to interact with the medical system. It talks a little bit about what's on the horizon with medicine, which are not necessarily urology topics. At its core, it's a love letter to my patients. It's all the things that I didn't have time to tell them in a 15-minute office visit. Because today in our current medical environment, the doctors are frustrated, the patients are frustrated. A lot of the time that we would have had eye-to-eye contact to answer questions and talk about things and to show compassion to our patients, we're now having to type in a computer and make sure that we have all of the documentation for the insurance industry and the government to be sure that their claims are paid. And I think both the patients and the doctors are leaving the exam room feeling unfulfilled. And so the book is an attempt to discuss the many questions that were asked by the patients that we really just didn't have time to discuss.

This transcript was edited for clarity.