Delivering Doctor Amelia

Doctor Dan Shapiro, a writer and psychologist, takes us on a mesmerizing personal journey into his treatment of a brilliant young obstetrician.

Doctors in our society are often viewed as omnipotent, highly trained professionals who do not make mistakes, but they are, after all, still human. In Delivering Doctor Amelia, Dan Shapiro, who specializes in treating physicians, provides us with an intimate view of the vulnerability and sensitivity of doctors when their white coats come off. When Amelia Sorvino, a gifted obstetrician on Shapiro’s university hospital staff, comes to see him fearing that she has made a medical mistake, he finds himself struggling to help her overcome her self-doubts and fears, while reliving his own painful recovery from cancer at the hands of doctors just like her. As Amelia’s story unfolds, both doctor and patient are transported into their pasts. And through this journey of self-discovery, Amelia Sorvino becomes someone the reader is pulling for—a good woman whose career, family, and perhaps even life are in jeopardy.

Intense, moving, and deeply human, Shapiro’s narrative invites us inside the minds and pasts of two very different and yet intimately connected people: doctor and patient, psychologist and physician. Like the work of Kay Redfield Jamison and Oliver Sacks, Delivering Doctor Amelia is a riveting narrative about the nature of healing, the power of redemption, and the compelling vulnerability of the human condition.

DAN SHAPIRO is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Arizona and the author of Mom’s Marijuana. An expert on physician self-care and physician-patient relationships, he has been featured in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and on ABCNews.com. He lives in Tucson.