Gordon Harper

The Soul of a Doctor: Harvard Medical Students Face Life and Death Gordon Harper

Brief Description: By the time most of us meet our doctors, they've been in practice for a number of years. Often they seem aloof, uncaring, and hurried. Of course, they're not all like that, and most didn't start out that way. Here are voices of third-year students just as they begin to take on clinical responsibilities. Their words focus on the odd transition students face when they must deal with real people in real time and in real crises and when they must learn to put aside their emotions to make quick, accurate, and sensitive decisions. Their decisions aren't always right, and the consequences can be life-altering-- for all involved. Moving, disturbing, and candid, their true stories show us a side of the profession that few ever see, or could even imagine. They show, often painfully, how medical students grow up, right at the bedside. Review Quotes: As Groopman states in his foreword, " each interaction between a doctor and a patient is a story." The moving stories of 44 doctors-in-training collected by two M. D.s (Pories and Harper) and one medical student (Jain), all at Harvard, are accounts written by medical students. Their tales convey lessons both emotional and medical, from learning how to communicate and empathize with those afflicted by illness to ways to ease suffering and loss. In one heartrending incident, David Y. Hwang describes a marine's rage followed by tears on hearing that his wife was going to die, while the wife herself remains in calm denial. Rajesh G. Shah explores how he learned from his first patient to overcome his judgmental attitude about those so beset by anxiety they cannot function without medication. In a particularly self-revelatory (and anonymous) piece, a student describes the endless hazing experience at the hands of interns and residents and the student's need to constantly manage a sense of insecurity. These are thoughtful and illuminating accounts of beginning physicians under stress, growing and changing as they progress through their chosen field.-- Publishers WeeklyJacket Description/Back: You're in a hospital trying for the first time to be a doctor. No more textbook diagrams and classroom cadavers; this is the real thing, in real time. You've got a patient who's convinced that her illness is the same one that she saw once on "Oprah" and is turning down all other tests. A young woman is being told she'll have to sacrifice one baby to save the other. And you just told another patient she might have cancer but left her panicked when you had to rush off. How do you handle all this and stay sane, and then somehow become a good doctor? Here are candid firsthand accounts of the profound experiences that transform medical students into doctors--for better or worse--right at the bedside. Review Quotes: As Groopman states in his foreword, "each interaction between a doctor and a patient is a story." The moving stories of 44 doctors-in-training collected by two M. D.s (Pories and Harper) and one medical student (Jain), all at Harvard, are accounts written by medical students. Their tales convey lessons both emotional and medical, from learning how to communicate and empathize with those afflicted by illness to ways to ease suffering and loss. In one heartrending incident, David Y. Hwang describes a marine's rage followed by tears on hearing that his wife was going to die, while the wife herself remains in calm denial. Rajesh G. Shah explores how he learned from his first patient to overcome his judgmental attitude about those so beset by anxiety they cannot function without medication. In a particularly self-revelatory (and anonymous) piece, a student describes the endless hazing experience at the hands of interns and residents and the student's need to constantly manage a sense of insecurity. These are thoughtful and illuminating accounts of beginning physicians under stress, growing and changing as they progress through their chosen field.--Publishers WeeklyCommendation Quotes: "Will reassure skeptics concerned whether our technological age is reducing the humanity of those entering medicine. It also challenges faculty to see that our training and socializing of these young people does not, in fact, squeeze the juice out of them. These exquisite reflections make for the complete physician." --Mitchell T. Rabkin, MD, author of the first hospital patients' bill of rightsCommendation Quotes: "This book should be required reading for all medical students, doctors, patients, and those of us who will be patients someday. In short, for everyone." --Alice HoffmanCommendation Quotes: "The stories in "The Soul of a Doctor" offer a unique vantage on illness, life, and struggle--capturing in vivid glimpses that crucial moment in a doctor's life when one transitions from outsider to insider. The stories here are moving, eloquent, and often unforgettable." --Atul Gawande, MD, author of "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science"Review Quotes: Medical schooling's decades-long focus on the science rather than the art of doctoring seems to be shifting. Doctors and their teachers are again recognizing that there is more to patient care than pages of numbers and medical images. The change isn't proceeding rapidly, though; indeed, one of the med-student contributors to this book notes being told, "The patient's history is totally worthless." The good news is that medical schools are beginning to adjust. In Harvard's patient-doctor course, students are required not only to work on the wards but also to write essays about their experiences. The results may be as surprising to them as it is sadly predictable to many patients. After viewing himself in a videotaped interview with a patient, one young man estimated that it had taken him only months to go from being "Mr. Empathy" to being "Dr. Jerk." One can almost hear the idea bulbs ignite as these students wrestle with issues of communication, empathy, and easing suffering and loss.--BooklistPublisher Marketing: By the time most of us meet our doctors, they've been in practice for a number of years. Often they seem aloof, uncaring, and hurried. Of course, they're not all like that, and most didn't start out that way. Here are voices of third-year students just as they begin to take on clinical responsibilities. Their words focus on the odd transition students face when they must deal with real people in real time and in real crises and when they must learn to put aside their emotions to make quick, accurate, and sensitive decisions. Their decisions aren't always right, and the consequences can be life-altering--for all involved. Moving, disturbing, and candid, their true stories show us a side of the profession that few ever see, or could even imagine. They show, often painfully, how medical students grow up, right at the bedside. Review Citations:

Publishers Weekly 03/27/2006 pg. 66 (EAN 9781565125070, Paperback)

Library Journal 04/15/2006 pg. 100 (EAN 9781565125070, Paperback)

Booklist 05/01/2006 pg. 60 (EAN 9781565125070, Paperback)

School Library Journal 07/01/2006 pg. 135 (EAN 9781565125070, Paperback)

Foreword 07/01/2006 pg. 39 (EAN 9781565125070, Paperback)

Contributor Bio:  Pories, Susan "SUSAN PORIES, M. D., a breast cancer surgeon and a surgical educator and investigator, has been named one of America's top surgeons and is a scholar in the Academy at Harvard Medical School."Contributor Bio:  Jain, Sachin H "SUSAN PORIES, M. D., a breast cancer surgeon and a surgical educator and investigator, has been named one of America's top surgeons and is a scholar in the Academy at Harvard Medical School."Contributor Bio:  Harper, Gordon "SUSAN PORIES, M. D., a breast cancer surgeon and a surgical educator and investigator, has been named one of America's top surgeons and is a scholar in the Academy at Harvard Medical School."Contributor Bio:  Groopman, Jerome Jerome Groopman, M. D., holds the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. A staff writer for The New Yorker, he is the author of How Doctors Think, The Anatomy of Hope, Second Opinions, The Measure of Our Days, and other books.