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.
Read moreThe Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No by bioethicist Carl Elliot
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.
Read moreA History of Present Illness by Anna DeForest
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.
Read more