Collections of medical essays rarely include a passage remotely like this one:
Whether I deserved my punishment no longer mattered. It led to one of the greatest honors I experienced in medical school—to have two coaches invested in my success: one was a French-Canadian boxer, and one was a Black surgeon from the South. They wanted the best for me in the ring, out of the hospital, out of the ring, and in the hospital...They are still teaching me how to be a more effective warrior for my people, my patients, and future generations.
- From the essay “My Undeserved Coaches” by Victor A. Lopez-Carmen, MD (Waokiya Mani)
Every obstacle in the life of a medical student or physician leaves a mark. No one can truly know how they will cope with a spouse’s death, academic failure, a parent’s dementia, work-life upheaval, sudden trauma, or chronic debility. If left unexamined, the scars accumulate since, of course, the work of medicine and healthcare must continue unabated.
While reading stories by peers who have stared into the abyss and then shouldered on, we investigate their potential responses. Along the way, we discover how we might have responded if challenged by similar circumstances.
Becoming a Better Physician: Insightful and Inspirational Stories from Attending Physicians, Residents, and Medical Students (Springer, 2024) grew out of a call for essays on how physicians have responded to overwhelming personal and professional challenges. This book, whose intended audience is “doctors and those interested in doctoring,” shares how specific challenges and experiences made each writer a “better physician.”
The diverse group of 44 contributors represent several U.S. academic medical centers but is overwhelmingly affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University and other Boston-area institutions.
The book has six sections: Learning and Training, Career, Caregiving, Physician as Patient, Personal Growth, and Love and Loss. Each section begins with an essay, poem or cartoon called a “Commentary,” followed by five to eight two- to three-page stories. As the editors note, many of the contributors “had not considered themselves storytellers before embarking on this project.”
The book includes some stunning work by narrative experts Rana Awdish, MD (author of In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope), Emily Silverman, MD (creator of The Nocturnists), Trisha Paul, MD (author of Chronicling Childhood Cancer: A Collection of Personal Stories by Children and Teens with Cancer and Field Notes editor of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine), Bernard Trappey, MD (Associate Director of the University of Minnesota Center for the Art of Medicine), Mai Uchida, MD (author of four books), and Cassie Ferguson, MD (author of the upcoming The Only Life You Could Save). There are outstanding, evocative essays by “newcomers” Emily Herzberg, MD, Victor Lopez-Carmen, MD, Carrie Cunningham, MD, Harvard medical student Clara Baselga-Garriga, and others.
Some of these stories are set during COVID-19, but most are written about times of personal crisis. A resident survives an overwhelming night working in the ED only to be called on the carpet the next morning for being harsh with a radiology technician. A physician with metastatic melanoma helps vulnerable patients “find a world where both fear and hope make sense.” Physicians are treated uncaringly by other physicians. Physicians’ spouses and children die. An aging parent deteriorates. A patient’s story opens up a new world when someone takes time to delve deeply into their past. It’s all here.
My only issue with this slender volume (the essays are contained within 126 pages) is the a-penny-away-from-$60-price. Like most Springer titles, the hardcover and electronic versions are out-of-reach for most medical students and residents. Still, medical libraries with access to the Springer catalogue will make this interesting collection widely available for check-out or download.
According to Joan Didion, “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Creating this book was likely a healing experience for the writers. As readers, we are the beneficiaries of what they discovered, all the while wondering how we might have grappled with these moments of crisis, as well. – Bruce H. Campbell
Bruce H. Campbell, MD FACS, is a retired head and neck cancer surgeon and Professor Emeritus of Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is a nonfiction editor for Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine and author of A Fullness of Uncertain Significance: Stories of Surgery, Clarity, and Grace.