Becoming Doctors: 25 Years Later


Book Description

Twenty-five years after graduating from America's top medical schools, twenty-five physicians from a dozen specialties share the joys and struggles of learning and practicing medicine today. After studying at Brown, Cornell, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Yale and a dozen more medical schools, these doctors went on to become emergency medicine physicians, family practitioners, gynecologists, internists, obstetricians, pediatricians, psychiatrists, and surgeons across the United States. Today, while working alongside the clinical soldiers and scientists protecting our citizens from this pandemic, these physicians tell us of the gratification, joy and fulfillment of their work coupled with their experiences of uncertainty, fear, and disappointment practicing medicine over three decades. Their essays, stories, drawings, and poems form a unique anthology, capturing their aspirations and struggles as students and their challenges and successes as physicians, parents, and teachers. Not surprisingly, when asked whether they would make the same career choice or whether they would recommend a career in medicine for their children, they reaffirm the decision to become doctors. Perhaps such predictability is best explained by an innovative thinker and gracious teacher from the past century, Albert Einstein, who said, "only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile." These physicians have done just that.




On Becoming a Doctor


Book Description

This insightful and candid guide unveils the truth about medical school, residency, and the fascinating realities that await aspiring physicians beyond the classroom. On Becoming a Doctor provides an essential roadmap for your medical odyssey including: Comprehensive Guidance: Delve into the intricacies of medical school life and residency, as well as the challenges and rewards of being a doctor. Gain invaluable insights into the various medical specialties, allowing you to make informed decisions about your future career path. First-Hand Accounts: Written by seasoned medical professionals, this book provides authentic first-hand accounts of the rigors and triumphs experienced throughout medical training. Learn from their experiences and use their wisdom to navigate your own journey with confidence. Balancing Life and Work: Discover the secrets to maintaining a healthy work-life balance in the demanding world of medicine. On Becoming a Doctor offers practical tips on managing stress, fostering personal well-being, and nurturing a fulfilling personal life alongside a thriving medical career. Residency Success Strategies: Unravel the complexities of the residency application process and equip yourself with indispensable strategies to stand out in this highly competitive arena. Our expert advice will empower you to excel during your residency and launch a successful medical career. Patient Stories: Be inspired by heartwarming and insightful patient stories that illustrate the transformative power of compassionate healthcare. Learn how to provide exceptional patient care and forge meaningful connections with those you serve. Navigating Medical Challenges: From medical ethics dilemmas to emotional resilience, On Becoming a Doctor addresses the diverse challenges doctors encounter. Equip yourself with the tools to overcome obstacles and make a lasting impact on the lives of your patients. Thriving Beyond Residency: Beyond residency lies a vast landscape of opportunities. Learn about alternative career paths, research opportunities, and potential for leadership roles within the medical community. Unlock your potential and discover what lies ahead in your fulfilling medical journey. Empower yourself with knowledge, empathy, and resilience as you embrace the transformative journey of becoming a doctor. A perfect graduation gift for any aspiring medical professional!




When Doctors Become Patients


Book Description

For many doctors, their role as powerful healer precludes thoughts of ever getting sick themselves. When they do, it initiates a profound shift of awareness-- not only in their sense of their selves, which is invariably bound up with the "invincible doctor" role, but in the way that they view their patients and the doctor-patient relationship. While some books have been written from first-person perspectives on doctors who get sick-- by Oliver Sacks among them-- and TV shows like "House" touch on the topic, never has there been a "systematic, integrated look" at what the experience is like for doctors who get sick, and what it can teach us about our current health care system and more broadly, the experience of becoming ill.The psychiatrist Robert Klitzman here weaves together gripping first-person accounts of the experience of doctors who fall ill and see the other side of the coin, as a patient. The accounts reveal how dramatic this transformation can be-- a spiritual journey for some, a radical change of identity for others, and for some a new way of looking at the risks and benefits of treatment options. For most however it forever changes the way they treat their own patients. These questions are important not just on a human interest level, but for what they teach us about medicine in America today. While medical technology advances, the health care system itself has become more complex and frustrating, and physician-patient trust is at an all-time low. The experiences offered here are unique resource that point the way to a more humane future.




Resident On Call


Book Description

In turn heartbreaking, irreverent, moving—and at times raucously humorous—one of the nation's leading pediatric researchers recounts his first years as a newly minted, stuggling, and insecure doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. A graduate of a state university medical school, Scott Rivkees was competing with elite students from some of the most prestigious schools in the country. Nervous and uncertain, he worked unholy hours with patients ranging from indigent street people to celebrity guests drawn to the reputation and care offered by Mass General. Along the way he learned what medical school textbooks don't teach: how to deal with immense pressure, exhaustion, unruly patients, mysterious conditions, the joy of saving a life, and the wrenching suddenness of losing a patient, more often than not a young child. His resident education did not prevent him from losing his sense of irony and humor as he recounts bleary nights on the town, the allure of young nurses, substandard housing, and the value of pricking an inflated ego.




Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors?


Book Description

In the 1830s, when a brave and curious girl named Elizabeth Blackwell was growing up, women were supposed to be wives and mothers. Some women could be teachers or seamstresses, but career options were few. Certainly no women were doctors. But Elizabeth refused to accept the common beliefs that women weren't smart enough to be doctors, or that they were too weak for such hard work. And she would not take no for an answer. Although she faced much opposition, she worked hard and finally—when she graduated from medical school and went on to have a brilliant career—proved her detractors wrong. This inspiring story of the first female doctor shows how one strong-willed woman opened the doors for all the female doctors to come. Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors? by Tanya Lee Stone is an NPR Best Book of 2013 This title has common core connections.




Becoming a Doctors' Doctor


Book Description

Becoming a Doctors' Doctor is author and psychiatrist Michael F. Myers' revelation of the fascinating and sometimes tragic encounters with doctors as patients. Physicians are expected to be resilient and to carry the burdens of others. But all too often, the on-the-job stresses can result in mental illness. Beginning with his roommate's suicide in the first year of medical school, Myers found himself craving to learn more about physicians and their vulnerabilities. In this memoir of his thirty-five year career, Myers shares vignettes of treating doctors for depression, alcoholism, burnout, and more. He reveals the stigma physicians face when asking for help and the struggles they endure while keeping others healthy and safe. A psychiatrist with a passion for helping physicians, Myers highlights the importance of mental health treatment for doctors and the social and emotional costs of serving the community. Beautifully written, Becoming a Doctors' Doctor heralds the many patients to whom he has devoted his practice and career.




What Doctors Feel


Book Description

“A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician” that explores the doctor-patient relationship, the flaws in our health care system, and how doctors’ emotions impact medical care (Boston Globe) While much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But understanding doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice can make all the difference on giving and getting the best medical care. Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Dr. Danielle Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. Ofri also reveals that doctors cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness.




What I Learned in Medical School


Book Description

A group of vivid, first-person stories of medical students who don't "fit the mold" and have had challenges completing conventional medical training.




Heirs of General Practice


Book Description

Heirs of General Practice is a frieze of glimpses of young doctors with patients of every age—about a dozen physicians in all, who belong to the new medical specialty called family practice. They are people who have addressed themselves to a need for a unifying generalism in a world that has become greatly subdivided by specialization, physicians who work with the "unquantifiable idea that a doctor who treats your grandmother, your father, your niece, and your daughter will be more adroit in treating you." These young men and women are seen in their examining rooms in various rural communities in Maine, but Maine is only the example. Their medical objectives, their successes, the professional obstacles they do and do not overcome are representative of any place family practitioners are working. While essential medical background is provided, McPhee's masterful approach to a trend significant to all of us is replete with affecting, and often amusing, stories about both doctors and their charges.




Being Mortal


Book Description

#1 New York Times Bestseller In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified. Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.