"An inspiring story of crucial and familiar aspects of the health care system. The Sadler brothers have an engaging story to tell and do so in an enlightening way." —Kirkus Reviews
"...Fred and Blair Sadler..., a tenacious lawyer-doctor team, share their inspiring quest to fundamentally change public policy and improve modern medicine." —BookLife Reviews
"Pluck is a memorable story of the work of two brothers on some of the twentieth century’s most crucial public health and bioethics issues, ending with inspiring lessons for today’s change makers." —Foreword Reviews
"The behind-the-scenes story of how twin brothers—doctor and lawyer—collaborated with scores of unsung heroes to modernize emergency medical services, help create the physician assistant profession, help write the model law for organ donation and develop other programs that save thousands of lives a year. Pluck is an inspiring model for how to lead major change—a great read, couldn’t put it down." —James A. Guest, Past President and CEO of Consumers Union
"They reverse engineer their effectiveness…in a series of lessons learned offering guidance for the leadership of change, always emphasizing initiative, optimism, resilience, and above all, cooperation…. No matter which of their several quests they describe, Blair and Fred also reveal a level of agility and creativity that marks the best leaders. They always seem to find a pathway out of paralysis and conflict into shared possibility." —Donald M. Berwick, M.D. President Emeritus and Senior Fellow Institute for Healthcare Improvement
"A jewel of a book full of keen insight about humane purpose, perseverance, and the power of TWO in making a lasting difference in service to others." —Leonard L. Berry, UniversityDistinguished Professor of Marketing at Texas A&M University
"This book is full of gems on how to scale a brilliant idea into widespread adoption. The Sadler brothers have had a major impact on the health sector over the past fifty years. This is their story." —Gary Cohen, Co-Founder and President, Health Care without Harm
"A great story, very readable and well written, with lessons for us all." —Lord Nigel Crisp, Chief Executive, the National Health Service, England 2000-2006
"The Sadler brothers were there at the beginning, shaping the early days of bioethics and drafting seminal legislation governing organ transplantation. In this charming account, they demonstrate how individuals can make a difference, offering a wise prescription for a new generation of leadership." —Joseph J. Fins, M.D., Professor of Medical Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College
"The authors demonstrate how the repeated sharing of ideas in a transparent manner can increase the investment of others in the need for change and affect the lives of many Americans. " —Carl Fasser, Past President, Physician Assistant Education Association, Professor and Program Director, PA Program Baylor College of Medicine
"In this comprehensive report of their journey to enhance health care for the public good, the Sadlers have captured the worth and value of teamwork. The lessons learned are shared for all of us who aspire to improve relationships in our work." —Loretta C. Ford, PNP, EdD, Co-founder of the first Nurse Practitioner Program in 1965, Universityof Colorado
"The authors’ stories challenge and empower us to identify comparable decisions and opportunities in our own lives. This book inspires and equips." —Megan Mayer, Author, Retired Lawyer, Consultant at Network for Impact
"This book is a testament to Pluck—risk taking, teamwork, persistence, creativity, and luck. Their lessons learned provide very valuable wisdom gained from decades of life in the trenches, with skin in the game." —Donald Pedersen PHD, PA past President of the Physician Assistant Education Association and Past Director of the Universityof Utah Medex PA Program
"Over the course of 5 decades, Fred and Blair Sadler have virtually defined synergism in their pursuit of worthwhile goals. From early on in their careers, they parlayed serendipitous encounters and bold actions that took them into numerous important 'rooms where it happened'—resulting in laws, movements, and novel career pathways that changed America’s healthcare system for the better." —Laurence H. Beck, MD Adjunct Professor of Medicine, Universityof Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
★ 2022-06-06
Twin brothers reflect on their careers working to improve health care in the United States.
In this dual memoir, identical twins Fred and Blair Sadler, authors of Emergency Medical Care: The Neglected Public Service (1977), recount the years they spent crafting aspects of the American medical system and related laws during the 1960s and ’70s. Fred, a physician, and Blair, an attorney, began working together as a “medical-legal team” shortly after finishing their graduate programs, serving at the National Institutes of Health, the Yale University School of Medicine, and other institutions. Their first project, beginning in 1967 and continuing into the early 1970s, was streamlining organ donation, working to establish a unified national system of managing donors and recipients and helping state legislatures to follow a common framework for organ donation laws. They later helped to develop the role of the physician’s assistant and establish training programs and certification standards, an important tool in meeting the growing need for primary care providers. The brothers’ final joint project, spanning the early-to-mid-1970s, involved modernization of emergency medical care, in partnership with Yale University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Their careers diverged after nearly two decades of partnership, as Fred completed his clinical training and became a practicing physician, while Blair moved into health care administration and oversaw the growth of Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, California, among other projects. The book concludes with a retrospective look at the areas they worked on, assessing practical and ethical successes and ongoing challenges, and sharing lessons they learned throughout their long careers.The Sadler brothers have an engaging story to tell and do so in an enlightening way in these pages. The book is largely written from their joint perspective, with occasional asides, labeled “Blair reflects” and “Fred reflects,” in which one of the brothers switches to first-person singular to detail his own experience. In addition to sharing credit with each other for the work they did together, they’re generous in detailing the roles played by mentors; in one memorable section, for example, Blair tells of meeting Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren at a squash game, which led to several discussions about the brothers’ work on organ donation. The authors also refer to work of various colleagues, which makes for a personal narrative that’s remarkably devoid of ego. The book does an effective job of showing how things many people take for granted, such as organ donor cards or well-equipped ambulances, are in fact rather recent innovations without turning the work into a full-blown history of U.S. health care. In addition, the Sadlers are thoughtful about the expansive role of health care in people’s lives (“a homeless shelter is a healthcare organization; the integration of mental health experts into the local police force is healthcare activism; the funding of breakfast programs for elementary school children is healthcare policy”), which makes their book a welcome addition to conversations on a range of important issues.
An inspiring story of crucial and familiar aspects of the health care system.
