Blogs

Book Review -Unheard- By Rageshwari Dhairyawaan

By Saumya Sharma- Publisher, IJPHRD

When I first came across Dr. Rageshwari’s book, it sparked a catharsis. Though I am not a healthcare professional myself, I have lived in the shadow of the profession. My parents were both healthcare professionals—my father, a senior faculty member in Forensic Medicine at AIIMS, and my mother, a devoted physiotherapist.

In 2018, our lives were upended—my father was diagnosed with Stage 3 head and neck cancer. Despite his sterling reputation in the medical community and the exceptional care he received from the AIIMS fraternity, this crisis laid bare the cracks in the healthcare system.

Dr. Rageshwari’s book brings to life stories like ours. Drawing from her experiences at the NHS in United Kingdom—a system far better resourced than India’s healthcare infrastructure—she shines a light on the shared challenges of healthcare systems worldwide. Her nuanced take explores the systemic failures that leave both patients and doctors feeling unheard, highlighting how indifference and apathy can permeate these systems.

The book begins by addressing the dismissal of patient experiences. One of the most challenging aspects of practicing medicine is interpreting “pain.” Pain doesn’t always manifest the way it is expected to, and its meaning is often ambiguous. In such cases, the “expert’s” judgment tends to override that of the sufferer.

She then moves on to explore how doctors themselves can feel unheard and excluded. Dr.Rageshwari powerfully argues that when doctors are sidelined or subjected to bullying and harassment, everyone suffers—including the system. She notes that this exclusion costs the NHS billions of dollars in lawsuits annually.

In one of her most provocative chapters, Dr. Rageshwari critiques evidence-based medicine, questioning its exclusive reliance on “objective” or experimental data. She highlights how anecdotal or subjective evidence—dismissed as not rigorous enough—can often provide invaluable insights. As a publisher of medical research, I particularly appreciated her emphasis on how systemic silencing leads to a tremendous knowledge gap. Women and minorities remain massively under-researched, and researchers from minority ethnic backgrounds often face suppression of their voices and work.

My favorite chapter was about patient advocacy, which highlights how breakthroughs for devastating diseases have often emerged when patients demanded that their experiences be heard. Dr. Rageshwari poignantly illustrates how these advocacy efforts have shaped medical advancements, turning individual suffering into collective action.

The book concludes with a powerful call to action: How can medical systems truly integrate the experiences of patients? Dr. Rageshwari’s work is not just a critique but a deeply compassionate blueprint for change. She urges greater integration of diverse perspectives and voices in healthcare, advocating for a system that listens, adapts, and puts the humanity back into medicine.