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Product Description:
Matrix pearls are the glue that holds medicine together - the valuable kernels of wisdom and experience that guide physicians through the complexities of modern medical practice. Most of the pearls arise from heated discussions at the morbidity and mortality (audit) conference, on hospital rounds, in hallway discussions or in the physicians' lounge, and many arise in the privacy of the consultation room or from family discussions, but the sad fact is these lessons are usually lost - they are seldom recorded and have never been catalogued...until now! Cut to the Chase: 100 Matrix Pearls for Doctors takes the grand oral traditions of medicine and records them as valuable lessons. Dr. Leo Gordon, author of the popular Gordon's Guide to the Surgical Morbidity and Mortality Conference, distills a thirty year career in medicine into one hundred witty, poignant and eminently readable essays. Students, nurses, administrators, and physicians in all specialties will find in this book a delicious and instructive view of the ups and downs of life in today's medicine.
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Average Rating : 
Rating : - A Royal Review - December 2007
Reviewed by:
Pradip K. Datta, Caithness General Hospital, Wick
Cut to the Chase, 100 Matrix Pearls for Doctors
L.A. Gordon
TFM Publishing Ltd
ISBN 978 1903378496
Imagine you are about to embark on a 15 hour journey from Edinburgh to Hong Kong. You are pondering your choice of reading material for the flight. If you would like a book with a surgical theme - one that you can dip in and out of in between your slumbers, drinks and meals, then this is the ideal book for you. As a matter of fact, anyone with a medical background would enjoy it.
On the other hand, you might think that a Jeffrey Archer or a Frederick Forsyth is a better and cheaper alternative. Let me see if I can persuade you, in the next few paragraphs, to invest in this publication. 'Cut to the Chase, 100 Matrix Pearls for Doctors' is an anthology of lessons learnt from 30 years of attendance at that particularly useful hospital meeting - the monthly morbidity and mortality conferences. The word 'matrix' means something within which something else originates and develops'. The book admirably lives up to its billing by this collection of 100 stories, humorously told and each of them quite brief.
The book is full of aphorisms - one on almost every page; some of them have a metaphorical side-swipe at colleagues such as 'Never allow a patient near an interventional radiologist on a Friday afternoon, at night or during a weekend'.
Others are moral lessons - 'Experienced surgeons know that any joy in another's surgical misfortune will deliver the same misfortune to him'. There are some excellent home-truths. In any conversation, resist starting a sentence with 'In my experience', the author asking the reader to save the term for 'in-laws, a cocktail party or a third year medical student'.
We are told not to celebrate prematurely when a complicated operation has gone well. He says 'Premature euphoriation (sic) reflects a lack of understanding'. I could not find the word 'euphoriation' in my dictionary, but I have now added to my vocabulary.
Some of the scenarios, much as they are extremely amusing, are unlikely to occur in an NHS setting. Amongst the humour, good advice is forthcoming when taking a history and writing notes - he asks us to avoid subjective terms. Tips on punctuation are also given - we have a Lynn Truss of surgical writing. The author's knowledge of the history of surgery and his way with words shines through in his writing. By his own admission he was a closet surgical historian but was ashamed to admit it. He has now 'come out'.
So, have I convinced you to take this book on your long flight? At £25 you might think it is more expensive than the usual offerings.
Much as you are tempted to take something cheaper, go on, invest in it and enjoy.
[From The Surgeon - Journal of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh & Ireland December 2007; Vol 5 No.6]
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