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- In Conversation With Dr. Stanley M. Berry Author of A Fight For Full Disclosure.
In Conversation With Dr. Stanley M. Berry Author of A Fight For Full Disclosure.
- By Norm Goldman
- Published November 17, 2021
- AUTHOR INTERVIEWS- CHECK THEM OUT
Norm Goldman
Reviewer & Author Interviewer, Norm Goldman. Norm is the Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com.
He has been reviewing books for the past twenty years after retiring from the legal profession.
To read more about Norm Follow Here
Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, Dr. Stanley M. Berry author of A Fight For Full
Disclosure.
Dr. Berry is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician who has provided care to women with high risk pregnancies for 37 years.
Dr. Berry was born and
raised in Minnesota, and from age eight, lived in a working class
north Minneapolis neighborhood.
His professional musician and music teacher father, along with his social worker and university faculty member mother, passed to him a love of music, reading, and a respect for hard work. He received a full scholarship to a Vermont boy’s boarding school where he finished grades 10 through 12.
A major in English literature was his goal as an undergraduate freshman, but after floundering and dropping in and out of mainly Macalester College over a four year period, he read Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms, and like the novel’s protagonist, the author joined an ambulance service in Minneapolis and was trained as an emergency paramedic.
He found his calling and
was eventually admitted to Mayo Medical School where he
graduated in 1984.
He completed an Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency at St. Louis University followed by a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellowship at Wayne State University. Although he refers to himself as a, “failed English major,” Dr. Berry never lost his passion for creative writing or his goal of communicating his ideas about the world of medicine and medical research through the medium of fiction.
He has authored or
co-authored a large number of medical publications.
Good day Dr. Berry and thanks for taking part in our interview.
Norm: What do you feel is
the most overrated virtue and why?
Dr. Berry: Before I answer, thank you so much Norm for allowing me this chance to answer questions about my novel.
Now, to answer your question, I
think being smart is the most overrated virtue. Having great
intellectual capacity is a plus and can carry one a long way,
but great intellect without discipline and hard work is an overrated
and wasted virtue.
When high intellectual capacity is matched against discipline and hard work, I believe the latter prevails 95% of the time. As my dad put it, “Race horses never beat mules”.
Norm: What is the one
thing other people always seem to get wrong about you? Dr. Berry:
That I have no sense of humor. I am an intimidating presence for
many people.
I’m African American, I’m 6 ft 5 inches tall, and I have hair on my face. I had a decision tree to work through when I was much younger.
That
is, it’s not my problem that people are intimated by me and
therefore it’s their problem.
For a time when I was young and angry, I left it to those who were intimidated to work through or not. But, as a non-angry young adult, I recognized the price this attitude was costing me, and I decided it was in my best interest to un-intimidate people I never meant to intimidate, and, humor became a very effective tool for doing this.
Norm: What has been your greatest challenge (professionally) that you’ve overcome in getting to where you’re at today?
Dr. Berry: A lack of discipline and consistency. I wanted to be a “writer” since my high school days, but I didn’t have the discipline. I floundered in college because I lacked the discipline to focus. I was willing to work hard, but not in the disciplined way that success demands. Once I found my “raison d’etre” so to speak, and that was medicine, it forced me to become disciplined for the first time in my life and overcoming the lack of this trait was probably my greatest triumph!
Norm: How has the publishing of your debut novel A Fight for Full Disclosure changed your perception of the process?
Dr. Berry: I believe that
my perception of the process has been distorted.
Although It took
me 12 years to complete my novel, it was accepted by the second
publisher I sent it to. I envisioned a much longer process.
But, I want readers to understand that I'm still pinching
myself over my good fortune. I consider myself extremely lucky to
have found someone willing to publish my work as quickly as I
did.
I intend to write another novel, and I don't expect that my luck will necessarily hold. In the end, I thank my publisher, Gene Robinson, for making my experience in this regard so different than what I expected it to be.
Norm: What purpose do you believe your novel serves and what matters to you about the story? As a follow up, whom do you believe will benefit from your book and why?
Dr. Berry: If my novel
serves a purpose, I hope it is to shed light on a process that very
few people are privy to.
That is, the inner workings of medical
institutions and some of the thought processes that go on in
the minds of healthcare workers when it comes to investigating
mishaps and telling the truth about those incidents.
Although the concept of full disclosure certainly is not mine, it is not accepted or practiced by most hospitals or their insurers, and perhaps my novel can inspire members of those organizations to try openness and honesty in these situations.
What matters to me about the story are some really old fashion concepts like - truth can triumph in adverse circumstances, but it often takes uncommon courage to make that happen, and there is often a significant price to be paid for standing up and speaking out to right a wrong.
Norm: What served as the primary inspiration for the book and how did you decide you were ready to write the book?
Dr. Berry: My primary
inspiration for writing the book was the work that I did in my
career to enhance patient safety in the hospital setting.
As
described in the book, to create a culture of patient safety
requires openness and honesty.
These concepts, and making full
disclosures to patients when things go wrong, is part of creating
that shift in culture. Full disclosure is a way of
acknowledging mistakes, and pressuring one’s self to ensure
that the causes of these mistakes are eliminated as thoroughly as
possible so that the mistakes aren't repeated.
Trying to ensure
that mistakes are not repeated is probably the most meaningful
act toward the patient and or the patient's family that healthcare
providers and institutions can do.
In the course of being in a
hospital leadership position, there were several times when I
had to meet with families and discuss untoward outcomes with
them. In several cases patients died, but in other instances
patients were injured but survived.
I met and discussed with these patients, and in some cases their families, exactly what happened and what was being done to prevent it from happening again. So, my inspiration for this story was a composite of many of my professional experiences including the necessity for disciplining physicians as well as witnessing cases in which physicians should have been disciplined but we're not.
For the
majority of my teenage and adult life, I wanted to be a
"writer". This story is based on professional
exposures that eventually congealed in my head and they became so
compelling that I could not not write this story.
At some point, the story was so driving and overwhelming that I had no choice but to sit down and begin.
Norm: What was your main focus when you created the characters of Dr. Warren Chambers and Dr. Harold Thompson?
Dr. Berry: My main focus
or the primary elements of character that I wanted to bring out
in Dr. Warren Chambers were first and foremost that he cared deeply
about both his professional life and his personal life. I
wanted to bring out his compassion, and I wanted to bring out
his indecision or at least his inability to act quickly on different
aspects of his life.
These traits come out several times in the story. I also wanted to root his indecision by delving into his childhood.
Finally, I tried to focus on how his compassion
overcame his indecisiveness and the inner battle that he waged in
besting his fears, self-doubt, and deficiencies in self-esteem.
As for Dr. Harold Thompson, I tried to focus on how a person
with a strong sense of right and wrong survives in an environment
where people are willing to quickly sacrifice those principles for
what they consider a greater good.
Again, I tried to show the reader how Thompson's tough upbringing both as a child and as an adolescent shaped his character and his willingness to stand up, really, without hesitation, to take those actions that he believed were right even if it meant a heavy cost to him – at least professionally – but also personally via the emotional stress he had to bear to do what he believed was the only path he could take.
Norm: How much of you is in the story?
Dr. Berry: A lot, a lot of
me is in the story - from the way the main character Dr. Harold
Thompson feels about things to the way he acts on things.
And, while I was writing the story, I was actually amazed at how my different life experiences and views could be expressed within the context of the story.
For instance, I have very strong feelings
about the foster care system which didn't necessarily have
anything to do with the main subject of the novel, however,
those feelings definitely came out in the backstory of one of the
characters.
And, things that I've often thought to myself bubbled up and spilled onto the page – like when Thompson is bemoaning to himself how difficult his job is and he thinks "... remember when you just had to have this job...". I've had that very thought not infrequently through the years. So, in many ways, big and small, the story is very much my story.
Norm: Did you learn anything from writing your novel and what was it?
Dr. Berry: I learned a lot
about storytelling. I learned that backstory is fine as long as it
keeps the front story moving. I learned more about how to
decide what criticisms to accept and ultimately use to alter my
manuscript and which criticisms to reject.
This is a tricky
lesson to learn because I believe one needs to stay open to the
opinions of others, but one also must learn that people's
critiques may be based on a vision quite different than your
own. I learned not to be afraid to change elements of the plot as the
story unfolds. Sometimes it is very important to maintain
suspense and dramatic effect and to accomplish those ends means
rethinking one’s original ideas.
I learned how self-editing is crucial and that reading what I write out loud is extremely helpful in creating the kind of word flow that I wanted. Overall, for me, writing this novel was very much a "going to school" experience.
Norm: How can readers find out more about you and A Fight For Full Disclosure?
Dr. Berry: Probably the best way to find out about me is to go to my WEBSITE. By far, the best way to find out more about A Fight For Full Disclosure is to read it.
Norm: What is next for Dr. Stanley M. Berry?
Dr. Berry: I plan to retire toward the end of 2022. I recently got married for a second time, and my wife lives in my hometown of Minneapolis. I will be moving from the
Detroit area to join her. I intend to make good progress on a second novel that I started, to spend time with my grandchildren and children, do some teaching, perhaps at the medical school level. I am also interested in teaching young people about writing, and I'll find a venue to do that.
Norm: As this interview comes to an end, if you can invite three authors of fiction to your dinner table, who would they be and why?
Dr. Berry: Seated at my dinner table would be Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison and Ernest Hemingway. Toni Morrison would be my guess because I love the way she told her stories.
She was a master at using simile to
make readers feel the mood or emotion she was trying to get
across, and she was so on point with her use of historical context to
further define her characters and the times they lived in.
I
admit there were times when Morrison almost lost me. Tar Baby
was a great example of this. I almost abandoned the book, but
40 pages in, the story and her characters grabbed me, and I couldn't
let go.
She fictionalized aspects of the Black experience and made them universal.
Ralph Ellison would be at my dinner table
because Invisible Man was a sweeping depiction of Black life in
America. Ellison's style in that novel ranged from expository realism
to the surreal and he used elements of jazz in his writing
style. I also would invite him to my dinner table because
Invisible Man was the only novel he completed.
Now that I find
myself in the position of starting a second novel, I'd like to
ask him if he could explain specifically what prevented him
from completing other novels.
Ernest Hemingway would be at my
dinner table because despite the fact that I believe his behavior was
despicable in many ways, e.g. he was a racist and an
anti-Semite and a man who glorified and romanticized macho
behavior, I very much admire his writing style.
When he was at
his best he was frugal with words and sometimes quite subtle in his
storytelling - the best example of the latter I can think of is
The Sun Also Rises. I'd like to question him about the basis
for his bigoted opinions and I'd also like to ask him about the
deep-seated unhappiness that I believe drove him to drink so heavily.
I believe our dinner table discussion would be lively,
passionate, and terribly interesting. I would be doing a lot
more listening than talking.
Lastly, I thank you, Norm, for taking the time to do this interview because I think it has shed some light on me and the novel.
Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your endeavors.
FOLLOW HERE TO READ NORM'S REVIEW OF A FIGHT FOR FULL DISCLOSURE