Love and Injustice in Medicine explores the injustices Jeff Nisker has witnessed in his many years in medicine, including the injustice of illness itself. As in Nisker's previous books, he uses narrative to investigate health-ethics problems, while at the same time promoting compassion in healthcare. Love and Injustice in Medicine will be of interest to health professionals of all disciplines, their students, and anyone interested in compassion and social justice in healthcare.

Nisker begins Love and Injustice in Medicine with his intimate experience of being immobile inside an MRI machine's rotating magnet during a cerebellar stroke. His immobility reminded him that he had promised to write a story for the woman he calls Ruth, who had driven her chin-operated powerchair into his knees and demanded, "Hey, Doc who writes stories, write one about me and the fucking way your system treats me." Ruth died from inadequate healthcare and social support while she was describing the injustices inflicted upon her by Canada's supposedly wonderful health and social systems. Although Nisker was touched deeply by Ruth's story, he did not begin to write the story he had promised her until his immunity had been shut down by chemotherapy.

Nisker flashes back to his uncle's kitchen-table declaration, "You must go to medical school or Hitler will have won"; a declaration that derailed his desire to become Atticus Finch. Yet the social-justice imperative instilled in Nisker by his mother and grandmother, both of whom died young from breast cancer, fills the pages of Love and Injustice in Medicine. Nisker writes about his years as a medical student, resident, clinician, health-ethics researcher, and advocate for social justice in Canadian healthcare. He contends that social justice, rather than being a dominant force in Canadian healthcare in the 2020s, is instead evaporating in privatization, with an inadequate number of physicians to provide excellent care for their patients while at the same time caring for their families and themselves. Nisker uses narrative to present his contention in an accessible manner, not only to health professionals and students of all disciplines, but to the general public, who through their votes are able to promote social justice in Canadian healthcare.

Jeff Nisker is a clinician, researcher, university professor, and writer. His plays and short stories bring the general public, health professionals, and policy makers to the position of persons immersed in the social inequities of new scientific capacities. Jeff has received many research grants in the basic, clinical, and social sciences to study prevention of estrogen-related cancer, ethical and social issues in reproductive genetics, and the lack of accommodation that persons with disabilities receive for health promotion. Jeff has also co-held a Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Health Canada grant to research public engagement and citizen deliberation for health policy development through his innovative use of full-length theatre. Jeff has authored or co-authored over 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters, many short stories, and seven plays published in the collection From Calcedonies to Orchids: Plays Promoting Humanity in Health Policy. His plays have been performed throughout Canada, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. Jeff has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Medical Humanities and ARS Medica and is the international representative on the Board of the Centre for Literature and Medicine. Jeff has served national positions such as Co-chair of Health Canada’s Advisory Committee on Reproductive and Genetic Technologies; Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada; Scientific Officer of the CIHR Peer Review Committee on Health Ethics, Law and Humanities; and Executive of the Canadian Bioethics Society. Jeff has received many research and education awards, including the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada President’s Award for the most significant contribution to the specialty; Western University’s Faculty Scholar’s Award for Innovation in Research and Education; and, for his plays promoting public engagement in health policy, Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music’s Music Excellence in Education Award, which recognizes the efforts of an outstanding educator who embraces the idea that the arts have a capacity to change the world. He was one of the first two obstetrician-gynaecologists inducted into the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Through all this, Jeff has maintained his clinical practice in hormone-dependent malignancy, pituitary tumours, and reproductive endocrinology.

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