“Most people, especially in medicine, are willing to help. They need to be asked.”
Weiland’s book offers an insider’s perspective on medical care, focusing on specific treatment procedures and the needs and reactions of patients, and is solidly grounded in the author’s many years as a physician. Growing up on a family farm in Colorado, the author played football avidly in high school and college while considering a medical career. He was accepted for that ambitious endeavor by the State University of South Dakota. There, his initial studies were starkly prefaced by a professor’s invitation to new students to “meet your cadavers,” with a warning that “many of you will fail.” By diligently studying many extra hours, Weiland began his upward trajectory, also meeting his future wife, Jeanne, who encouraged and supported him throughout his lengthy, challenging career.
At the University of Nebraska, nearing graduation, Weiland contemplated what aspect of medicine he should undertake. After a medical military position during the Vietnam War, he began to envision his best professional foothold: enhancing communication and trust between doctors, patients, and medical staff. He was able to “see” patients’ distress, sometimes acting contrary to a supervisor’s instructions. This action, known as “quasi-normative,” was a term gleaned from the impactful work of Charles L. Bosk, PhD. Quasi-normative infractions could result in dismissal. Yet on more than one occasion, Weiland’s determination to pursue his best, science-based instincts resulted in saved lives and evoked positive prognoses.
These critical incidents, along with often exhausting workday schedules and strict requirements for professional progress, are described by Weiland with verve and expertise. He also includes an extensive and fascinating “Travel Log” depicting his many medical and private ventures to more than thirty foreign countries. Beginning with a military assignment in Panama, accompanied by Jeanne and two children, the journeys were often based around work-related assignments, while some were happily undertaken to fulfill the couple’s shared attraction to adventure. Destinations included such global sites as Alaska, India, Tasmania, Egypt, Norway, Japan, and Kenya, providing Weiland the scope to “compare treatment practices and equipment available for diagnosis and treatment with what was available in the United States.”
Weiland’s memoir, skillfully and honestly arrayed, clearly reveals him as someone who was constantly trying to make improvements, both medical and community-based, centered on his wide store of scientific understanding and his deep concern for patient needs. He redesigned hospital workspaces to facilitate the delivery of staff services and led an initiative to ensure that Phoenix, Arizona, firefighters knew where and how to deliver victims to the most appropriate treatment facilities. Toward the end of his fifty-three-year medical career, he became president and secretary/treasurer of the Arizona Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, garnering the Lifetime Achievement Award. Along with personal and familial reflections, Weiland has arrayed enlightening, enlivening materials to advise and guide “any professional.” He offers the staunch principles of his medical and socially impactful endeavors to be applied as a template for understanding and expanding educational and employment possibilities across a wide spectrum of complex duties and long-term aspirations. Fans of medical memoirs may find the author’s book is just what the doctor ordered.
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