What is it like to be your primary care physician? How do day-to-day pressures, concerns and unfolding developments impact the one who looks after your health and wellbeing? What does your doctor feel about the responsibilities and nagging questions that are an integral part of every waking hour? What is it like to know that each routine decision is potentially life-altering to your care? Who cares about your future medical care? Jordan Grumet's writing builds an insider's level of understanding. His unique delivery is simple and eloquently succinct. His potential audience is at a critical juncture in medical-political development, particularly in the United States, and his impactful prose is already vitally felt by a growing number of readers. The timing is optimal for Jordan's writing to be published as a widely accessible collection of stories and essays. Reverent dedication to quality diagnostic care permeates his writing and motivates Jordan to share from the head and heart. Each new essay challenges his readers to think and feel, taking on the varying perspectives of his challenging, endearing and beloved patients, and of family members of the ill or dying. Jordan's words deepen our understanding of the unwelcome, or sometimes welcome, arrival of Death. Jordan opines from experience, while he illustrates doctor-patient relations; doctor-colleague conduct and cooperation; and the impact that exponentially increasing forms, restrictions, technology and time commitment have on the delivery of quality care to patients. You and I and all of those in the medical system feel the impact of this government- and insurance-driven regulatory environment. More and more physicians are shutting down, opting out or simply struggling to juggle the burden of imposed digital and paper requirements, while their expertise is in medicine. Quality medical care, based on face-to-face doctor-patient relationship building, is lagging as a result. Jordan Grumet delivers this news powerfully and persuasively. His ability to do so is both timely and important. Married with two children, he sometimes includes family members in descriptions of his daily life and medical practice. In one essay, Jordan relates how his son's birth reawakens a depth of feeling that he previously guarded tightly as protection from the emotional impact of his work. In story after short story, Jordan reveals to us just how he is able to channel a full range of emotions, healthily and consciously, into his daily interactions. To whom does Jordan's writing appeal? Doctors, nurses and ancillary support workers all relate strongly to his descriptions of the front lines of medical care. Lay people who care about the future of their own medical needs, and all who've felt the benefits of kindly delivered care, resonate with his words. These various reading audiences either nod knowingly, based on their own similar experiences, or burst into tears as they "get it" that a physician is called to devote such an ample measure of body, heart and soul to their compassionate care. Humility. Naked self-assessment. Doubt. Surety. Wonder. Devotion. A peek inside.
About the Author: Almost daily, Jordan Grumet writes something he will publicly share, a practice adopted long before he became a doctor of Internal Medicine. His readers are privileged to first-hand accounts of personal and professional struggles, joys, sorrows, shortcomings and intrinsic rewards. Jordan's exposure to reading and listening audiences includes: -His regularly updated blog In My Humble Opinion.blogspot.com. -Social media's leading physician website KevinMD.com. -The Medical Bag.com. -Medical Economics -Next Avenue -Northern MSW: Advocacy, Aging, Healthcare & Social Work Issues. -Twitter followers @jordangrumet -Essays in two anthologies: Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation, by Kevin Pho, and More Voices, by Paul Gross and Diane Guernsey. -Concierge Medicine Today.org, Center for Advancing Health cfah.org, The Doctor Blog.com (ZocDoc), Wall Street Journal's "Popular Health Stories from Around the Web," Health Beat, Hospital Leadership Advisor and Medical Staff Leader Blog, and The North Shore Magazine. -Interviews on MDigitalife and the Mike Sevilla Radio Show. -Poetry in The Journal of General Internal Medicine, The Annals of Internal Medicine, The Pharos, and Touch: The Journal of Healing, as well as two anthologies: On Being A Doctor (Laine and Lacombe) and Poet Healer (Chip Spann). -The Lives You Touch Publications released his chapbook of poetry, Primary Care, in Winter 2012. -Short stories in Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Proto Magazine and Medical Economics. His interest in becoming a doctor ignited when Jordan's father, an oncologist, died unexpectedly in the prime of life. This life-shaping boyhood loss colors Jordan's self-reflective writing and manifests as his genetic destiny to practice medicine. He received his medical degree from Northwestern University and now practices Internal Medicine in Highland Park, Illinois. Jordan's shares from his own experience, advising and plainly addressing the challenges of becoming a physician in today's political-medical milieu. As the acting medical director of two nursing facilities, Jordan responsively pivots Internal Medicine, Hospice and Palliative Care and fervently advocates for the best care possible through the end of life. Unwilling to compromise in a role he feels compelled to fulfill, and after much soul-searching, Jordan launched his own concierge-style, home-based medical practice in 2014.