See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor by Grace Farris

April 1, 2026 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

Grace Farris’s graphic memoir See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor tackles a timely topic: After the painful healthcare reckoning of the Covid-19 pandemic, a few years of decline and a dip in med-school applications, people want to go into medicine again. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reported last December that medical school enrollment topped a record high of 100,723 in 2025 (based on data collected from the 2025-26 application cycle), and women "accounted for 57.2% of all applicants." Apparently, 2019 was the first year when more women than men were enrolled in medical school, and the numbers have only increased since then.

Surgeon on the Edge by Frances Mei Hardin, MD

March 20, 2026 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

***Surgeon on the Edge*** (Hippocratic Press, 2026), a memoir by physician Frances Mei Hardin,

As a physician who went through medical school and residency training in the 1990’s, I’m always on the lookout for books by fellow female physicians that shed the tough outer skin we were taught to wear and dig beneath into the painful underbelly of what it took to get us where we are.

So I was eager to read Surgeon on the Edge (Hippocratic Press, 2026), a new medical memoir by physician Frances Mei Hardin, who recently co-founded the Hippocratic Collective to highlight the voices and experiences of physicians. I was interested to see how Hardin’s experience lined up with mine and my peers: As is the case with other female physicians, I too experienced sexism and harassment throughout training and practice, but I also had inspiring attending physicians and patient experiences that remain precious moments during that time.

Becoming a Better Physician: Insightful and Inspirational Stories from Attending Physicians, Residents, and Medical Students, edited by Mark Allan Goldstein and Kathy May Tran

February 23, 2025 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

Becoming a Better Physician - book cover image

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.

The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No by bioethicist Carl Elliot

October 2, 2024 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

In The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No (W.W. Norton, 2024), bioethicist Carl Elliot begins his ethical exploration into whistleblowing in medical practice and research, surprisingly, with a personal account. Working within a discipline that has historically sought to separate subjective insights from detached analyses of putatively objective principles and systems of thought, Elliot details his experiences, calling attention to a psychiatric research study at his home institution that appeared to contribute to the suicide of one its participants. He recounts the painstaking process of bringing the injustice to light and holding his institution to account, only to find himself progressively ostracized, denigrated and ultimately thoroughly disillusioned.

A History of Present Illness by Anna DeForest

November 21, 2022 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

The narrator of A History of Present Illness is a young doctor going through the daily initiation of learning her vocation. In the story, the narrator subverts the fabled tradition of medical education through her position as an outsider on the inside. We discover her history in increments: She grew up in an unstable home with a mother who drank too much. In her adolescence, she walks in to see her pregnant mother sitting on the kitchen floor shooting staples into her arm. Financial instability is a way of life, as is self-injury: The narrator cuts lines into the creases of her hands, to manage the suffering and hide her scars.