The Soul of a Doctor: Harvard Medical Students Face Life and Death by Susan Pories (Editor), Gordon Harper (Editor), Sachin H. Jain (Editor)

From the Publisher

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 totake 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.

Publishers Weekly

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. (June 2) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Breast cancer surgeon Pories, Harvard medical student Sachin H. Jain, and child and adolescent psychiatrist Gordon Harper have compiled approximately 50 firsthand student accounts born from a patient-doctor course at Harvard Medical School taught by Pories. Averaging several pages, these essays are startlingly well written, and if a few of them are occasionally a little maudlin or trite, the authors' sincerity is authentic. The essays are grouped into four sections: "Communication," "Empathy," "Easing Suffering and Loss," and "Finding a Better Way." Some describe a patient's family or a hospital colleague, while others focus on students' private lives. Joe Wright addresses the often difficult task of interviewing a patient; Mike Westerhaus offers a meta-analysis of the art of listening. There is no excessive use of medical terminology, and less-common words are explained in parentheses, which makes these essays entirely accessible to general readers. Academic and medical school libraries will want to purchase this book, and its low price, emotional impact, and 21st-century perspective will make it a desirable purchase for public libraries as well.-Martha E. Stone, Massachusetts General Hosp. Lib., Boston Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This collection of essays written by medical students going from the classroom to their first experiences with live patients gives personal views of the issues doctors face. From communicating diagnoses to patients to balancing medical protocol with patient needs, medical students have a unique perspective. They see established procedures with new eyes and question everything. Each essay conveys a pivotal moment or experience for its author. One individual learning to take medical histories watched a video of himself interacting with patients and realized that he never looked up and was brusque to the point of rudeness. Teens exploring medical careers will find much to think about here.-Charlotte Bradshaw, San Mateo County Library, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

"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 rights

Product Details

• ISBN: 156512507X
  
• ISBN-13: 9781565125070
• Format: Paperback, 236pp
• Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
• Pub. Date: June 2006
• Sales Rank: 60,697