Dr. Kurapati has created a masterpiece, a true piece of art, by calling for a balance in the science and personal skill in medicine. This timely book should be required reading for medical and nursing students, and their teachers, to place humanity back at the center of patient care.

Clinical Professor of Cardiology, Author of Your Whole Heart Solution

Powerful, thought-provoking book. A must read for any healthcare provider who struggles to balance the art with the science of medicine. While technology remains the focus and is ever-rising, Dr. Kurapati reminds us of the importance of compassionate care and human connection.

Author of Nursing from Within

Dr. Kurapati uses his book as an opportunity to delve into the evolution of medicine and the issues that have influenced us in the medical community over time. Through his writing, he reminds us that as physicians, we not only learn from our textbooks, but the world around us and those who practiced before us. Art, science, emotion, religion, and technology all play a part in this informative book that encourages us to transform our practice of medicine and strengthen the physician-patient relationship.

Emergency Physician and Humanitarian

Physician by Dr. Rajeev Kurapati is a fascinating review of medical history. It explores the doctor-patient relationship but dives in deeper than typical writings on the subject to answer questions such as “Why me?” that patients may ask when suffering. In Physician, religious as well as metaphysical answers are investigated throughout the history of medicine but hold validity into current times. Reading this book, it is easy to see how a patient or a healthcare worker can incorporate a higher thinking into addressing aspects of human suffering that are not normally addressed in the medical setting. I recommend this book to anyone who may ever need to see a doctor. Additionally, anyone working in healthcare should read this book to gain a better understanding on what patients are thinking and experiencing.

Physician and Author of Inside Our Broken Healthcare System

This excellent book is an eye-opener!  Dr. Kurapati describes the history of care in fascinating detail, all the while relating it to today’s forever changing philosophies and the evolution of healthcare. This book is relatable to anyone who has ever navigated the healthcare landscape.

Healthcare Executive and Co-Founder of Hyperbaric Center For Advanced Healing, Los Angeles, California

In the book Physician Dr. Rajeev Kurapati brings heart and soul into sharing his perspectives on a time-honored profession that has increasingly fallen away from its charge of caring for the whole person as an art of caring, to one that has succumbed to the modern narrative of separating the patient from the physician, relying instead on high-tech solutions and the limitations of time constrained care.

Through his narrative, he sutures together the disparate aspects of care that have pervaded the ages. He takes us on a brief voyage through time, examining the origins of medicine from its beginnings in BC Egypt, Greece and other developing cultures, through medicine’s march into Europe to the present, and then posits a theory for what is to come in the beyond now.

At times, Kurapati waxes poetic in one moment, shifting to a clinical and succinct voice in the next, emulating the essence of medicine’s evolution, bringing to bear that fact that medicine has wavered – at times struggled – between the poetic and sterile in its attempt to serve the patient. He believes that we now stand within a liminal moment, with a potent potential to merge the many aspects of medicine into a high-tech, high-touch environment, where tech and touch support the patient-physician relationship in a synergy that allows the return to attending the patient’s illness narrative and experience as well as the disease process.

This book was an easy read, packed with insights and ideas that should leave the reader with a sense of possibility and personal reflection on what it means to be a healer-philosopher-educator.

Healthcare Consultant, Keynote Speaker and Author of Minding the Bedside

In the current climate of health care delivery, physicians face numerous forms of pressure to be able to sustain their clinical practice. Between the ever-extending duration of medical training, handling increasingly complex patients and delivering value based medical outcomes, the spiritual aspect of healing is a lost art. In this fascinating narrative of the history of medicine, Rajeev Kurapati vividly describes ancient forms of medical practice that blended the physical and spiritual aspects of healing, and contrasts it with the current state of emotional distancing modern medicine practice typifies. This book is a must read for physicians and allied health professionals to be able to gain a deeper understanding of the patient’s perspective in the context of 21^st century medicine. It will undoubtedly add a new dimension in the thought process and delivery of health care in a holistic manner.

Associate Program Director, Department of Internal Medicine, Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia. Clinical Associate Professor, Sidney Kimmel College of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia

Dr. Kurapati beautifully weaves the lessons of history with personal stories, giving the reader a keen perspective of present day medicine.  His book, Physician:  How Science Transformed the Art of Medicine is very unique.  It will bring the layperson and the professional to new grounds in understanding the evolving physician-patient relationship.

Surgeon and Author of The Cost of Cutting

Dr. Rajeev Kurapati’s new release Physician: How Science Transformed the Art of Medicine is an engaging, well written account of how and why physicians should blend hard medical science with soft thorough perspective.  Dr. Kurapati details real patient experiences in part to explore the evolution of ancient history’s view of medicine as well as to nudge current and budding physicians to be more eclectic.  Patient treatment is best addressed on all fronts, medical assessments leading to a working treatment plan woven together with genuine empathy.

Occupational Therapist and Author of I Will Never Forget

Dr. Kurapati offers a fascinating review of the history of medicine that leads to an extraordinary vision for its future. As a nurse, I am inspired by his comittment to both evidence-based practice and compassionate care. Current and future physicians who integrate his vision into their practice will be leaders of a system that is healing, holistic, cost-effective, and rewarding to work in.  Patients, families, and the entire healthcare team will all benefit!

Author of Medical Improv: A New Way to Teach Communication

Dr. Kurapati begins with the simple question of why medical literature is generally very technical, and takes on the central question of what it is to be a physician.  He offers the reader a rich and engaging account of the history of medicine, the growth and evolution of scientific basis as well as the art of medicine.  The author gives an elegant account of how the roles of the typical physician have evolved over time with advancements in science and technology and how several societal forces have come to shaped the doctor-patient relationship.  The author gives a rich account of several physician-patient encounters that cause one to reflect on the purpose of medicine, including treating patients as individuals whose problems may often not be reducible to well characterized mechanisms, but may be colored by emotional needs that require empathetic listening and appropriate responses.  The author concludes his journey with reflective advice for his physician colleagues and future doctors.  The book is written in an engaging style, and with minimal technical jargon; it is apt to enlighten not only health professionals but anybody interested in the history of the science and art of medicine, and in questions such as what it really means to be a physician, and what it means to provide patient-centered care.

Dr. Rajeev Kurapati’s latest book Physician interweaves patient stories and the history of medicine from ancient times to the present explaining how the doctor patient relationships have evolved over time. His summary of medicine covers not only Western Medicine, but the history of ancient China, India, and the Middle East giving the reader a full understanding of how physicians went from spiritual and physical healers to the physical healers of today, loosing much of their spiritual role. He concludes the book by discussing how technology has affected and will continue to impact the physician-patient relationship going forward, pointing to the fact that a wise physician will adapt to the technology instead of fighting it. Physician is a well written book for anyone interested in medical history, the patient-physician relationship, or a perspective on the future of medicine.

Cardiologist and Clinical Researcher

Coming from a very science-oriented background, both in terms of education and workplace experience, I look at patient care from a very pragmatic viewpoint.  This well-written and powerful book acted as a catalyst for me to see that helping patients is more than tests and diagnoses.  I have always known about the emotional aspects of illness, but now have found ways of having an even greater connection with patients.  Your work with patients will be transformed by the content of this book.  A must-read book for everyone working with patients!

Founder & Director, Center for Healthcare Communication, Cleveland, OH

This work, illuminates the history of our medical practice. This is an excellent read for any one in healthcare. How can we understand where we are going if we do not know where we have come from.

Assistant Professor of Nursing, Ivy Tech Community College, Lawrenceburg, IN

Modern medicine’s focus on the mechanics of disease to the exclusion of the emotional and spiritual dimensions of illness and healing remains both its greatest strength and a growing weakness, according to this historical study.

Kurapati (Unbound Intelligence, 2014), a doctor, frames his discussion with his patients’ persistent questions about the meaning of their suffering and frustration at physicians who view them as assemblages of malfunctioning organs rather than whole human beings. He examines the centurieslong development of that mechanistic mindset. Ancient medicine, he argues, was a deeply religious and philosophical enterprise: healers, who were often priests, attributed disease to divine (or demonic) intervention or explained it in terms of a whole-life balance of elements and energy flows. Unfortunately, while these systems comforted the sick and embedded their anguish in a meaningful worldview, they hardened into unverified dogmas that seldom healed patients physically and sometimes, as in the practice of bloodletting, hurt them badly. That all changed starting in the Renaissance: an understanding of the body as a machine with a blood-pump at its center took hold; empirical observation began to eclipse received wisdom; dissection and new scientific instruments revealed hidden structures and processes in the body; and controlled experiments and statistical analysis made objective verification the gold standard in medical practice.

Kurapati’s loose-limbed, erudite, but accessible exploration of this history ranges back to ancient Greece, India, and China and forward to the latest trends in robotic surgery and implanted sensors. He leavens the narrative with vignettes from his own clinical experiences, which are vividly observed—during his first Code Blue resuscitation, “in the farthest corner of the room, medical students huddled among the comfort of their clan”—and deftly illustrate his scholarly themes. (He notes how the dissection of cadavers in medical school inculcated in him a callousness and detachment that enable a dispassionate clinical attitude.) His case that scientific “dehumanization” is a serious drawback in modern medicine is not as strong as his argument that it was an indispensable breakthrough: as one of his illuminating anecdotes shows, a good hospital chaplain works wonders at salving a patient’s despairing soul, letting the doctors deal with patching the body.

A stimulating account of how medicine advanced by getting physical.

PHYSICIAN, by Rajeev Kurapat, MD, is an insightful and well written book exploring the difficult psychological, spiritual, and emotional questions faced by the suffering patient and the effect of the historical development of medicine on the place of such questions as part of the overall treatment plan.  Although written from the distinct perspective of a physician, anyone involved direct patient care will appreciate the subtle and eloquent simplicity of Dr. Kurapati’s narrative style.  From ancient, philosophical foundations of healing to modern technologies almost bereft of anything philosophical, this book will with stimulate and challenge the reader to explore their own beliefs, ideas, and understanding of the complexities of the art and science of medicine.

St. Elizabeth Medical Center, Northern KY

In his book, Physician: How Science Transformed the Art of Medicine, Dr. Rajeev Kurapati, MD, MBA, a hospitalist at St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Northern Kentucky (a member of the Mayo Clinic Center) examines the history and evolution of medicine from mystics trying to heal the ills caused by angry gods to today’s evidence based holistic care.

Sandwiched between historical aspects of medicine, Dr. Kurapati shares stories of some of his own patients and how his philosophy of care has evolved over the span of his career. As he has spent years treating patients and dealing with family members who wanted only to keep their loved one hanging on until a miracle could be found, Dr. Kurapati has found the art of medicine to be beneficial and evidence-based. He resolves that even with the continuing scientific findings and inventions, treating the whole patient is at the center of quality patient care.

I found this book to be fascinating and heartwarming all at the same time. Nursing has always been about combining the science of medicine with the art of caring. This is what has always made nursing such an essential part of patient care and the successful outcomes. If Dr. Kurapati can influence physicians to see the benefit of providing a more holistic approach to providing medical care, we can all benefit greatly from the results. This should be required reading for all first-year medical students.

It should also be a must-read for nurses and nursing students to learn how we can all work together to improved the art of medicine and improve our patient outcomes.

Owner, Editor-in-Chief The Nursing Site