Demanding Compassion: How We Humanize Healthcare Again
by Dr. William L. Scarlett
$15.00 – Now Available
ISBN-Paperback: 979-8-89514-037-6
ISBN-ebook: 979-8-89514-041-3
What happened to compassion in healthcare?
In Demanding Compassion, Dr. William Scarlett pulls back the curtain on modern medicine—not the glossy version shown in marketing campaigns, but the reality lived by doctors, nurses, and patients every day. With candid honesty and deep conviction, Scarlett challenges both his colleagues and his patients to remember why medicine exists in the first place: to help people heal.
This book is both a call to action and a blueprint for change. For burned-out physicians questioning why they ever chose this path, Scarlett offers a reminder of their purpose and the hope that change is possible. For patients and their families, he offers empowerment—the knowledge that they are not powerless in the face of confusing systems and indifferent bureaucracy.
Demanding Compassion is an invitation: to challenge the status quo, to humanize healthcare again, and to reclaim the simple, revolutionary idea that people should be treated like people. Whether you’re wearing a white coat or sitting in a waiting room, this book will inspire you to demand—and deliver—better and more compassionate care.
Patient/Physician Agreement
Healthcare is a partnership between an individual and his/her doctor. To have a partnership work effectively, we need to share common ground. Use this agreement as a reminder of what it takes to work together to accomplish your goals.
Download the Patient/Physician Agreement
I was privileged to be asked to contribute a chapter to each of these books. The first of which is “Surviving Cancer: Our Voices and Choices”. This is a compilation of authors put together and illustrated by Marion Behr. This book was given multiple awards, including be named the President’s Book Award Winner.
The second book chapter that I was asked to write was for psychologist and dear friend, Susan Apollon. She addresses the journey of a cancer diagnosis and the psychological healing that needs to take place for each patient and their family. She continues to give these puts to our breast cancer patients without charge.
Most recently, I published an article in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons on ethics and credentialing. This piece had to do with racism and how we deal with this as it presents itself with our colleagues. I discussed how other industries have addressed this and pointed out that the healthcare system is very far behind.
I published a modification of a new procedure in the Annals of Plastic Surgery. There I describe the technique of lifting a patient’s breast at the same time as we are doing a nipple sparing mastectomy. I have had the honor of teaching this technique to surgeons from around the globe.
I published an article in The American Journal of Cosmetic Surgery with a novel treatment for capsular contracture. This is an issue that patients can develop if they have had breast reconstruction with an implant. This treatment used a low-level laser in the office. This publication led to me being given a patent on the laser for this use.
Our partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center and Cooper was covered in an article by Surburbanlife. We discussed multidisciplinary care models, state of the art radiation treatments and new research studies that are changing the way we care for cancer patients.
I wrote an op-ed piece for a physician magazine discussing communication with patients and how this can affect medical compliance. I discussed that taking the time to let the patient discuss their symptoms as well as the areas of their life that may be contributing to these symptoms is paramount to diagnosis and treatment.
Dr. DuPree and I published a paper together in The American Journal of Cosmetic Surgery, based on a patient we took care of together that had one of the first nipple sparing mastectomies done in the United States, as well as one of the first silicone implants used for reconstruction.
A friend of mine, Steve Young, and I wrote an article that was published in the Journal of AOA discussing patient compliance as the most ignored national epidemic. We then published another article for the Journal of POMA on listening to your patients and taking the time to let them tell you what their medical issues are.
Steve Young and I previously had written an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer on the Compassion Crisis in Healthcare. We discussed that we have moved away from the compassionate care scenario of years gone by, to more of a fast-food model for our current healthcare system. We discussed the detriment to both the physician and the patient.
My other medical publications can be found within my CV (click here to download).