This book is written as a memoir and yet it is a story with a distinct moral lesson. Victoria Sweet traces her evolution as a physician, beginning with a formative experience as an undergraduate in which she was introduced to the work of Carl Jung. Inspired to go to medical school with the intent of becoming a Jungian therapist, she instead became enamored with the practice of internal medicine and chose a different route. As it would happen, she came of age as a physician during a time of turmoil in health care, when the emphasis on economy and efficiency diverted attention away from the relationship with and accountability to individual patients.
The title of the book is a reference to the slow food movement, which started in Italy around the time Sweet was doing her residency. This movement, named for its opposition to fast food, proposed that the quality...