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

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.;Intro; Epigraph; Contents; Foreword; Preface; Introduction; I. Communication; More Like Oprah, Alaka Ray; Learning to Interview, Joe Wright; The Difficult Patient, Anh Bui; No Solution, Keith Walter Michael; An Emotional War on the Wards, David Y. Hwang; Giving Bad News, Amanda A. Muñoz; Straight Answers, Aari Wassner; Of Doors and Locks, Matt Lewis; Reclaiming the Lost Art of Listening, Mike Westerhaus; II. Empathy; Inshallah, Yetsa Kehinde Tuakli-Wosornu; The Twelve-Hour Child, Wai-Kit Lo; On Saying Sorry, Alejandra Casillas; Coney Island, Yana Pikman; The Naked Truth, Joseph Corkery. Intro Epigraph Contents Foreword Preface Introduction I. Communication More Like Oprah, Alaka Ray Learning to Interview, Joe Wright The Difficult Patient, Anh Bui No Solution, Keith Walter Michael An Emotional War on the Wards, David Y. Hwang Giving Bad News, Amanda A. Muñoz Straight Answers, Aari Wassner Of Doors and Locks, Matt Lewis Reclaiming the Lost Art of Listening, Mike Westerhaus II. Empathy Inshallah, Yetsa Kehinde Tuakli-Wosornu The Twelve-Hour Child, Wai-Kit Lo On Saying Sorry, Alejandra Casillas Coney Island, Yana Pikman The Naked Truth, Joseph Corkery. Losing Your Mind, Esther HuangBreathing the Movie, Joe Wright Donor, Kimberly Layne Collins Living with Mrs. Longwood, Rajesh G. Shah III. Easing Suffering and Loss Not Since 1918, Kedar Mate The Tortoise and the Air, Vesna Ivanĉić "Looking at the World from Far Away," Amy Antman Early-Morning ED Blues, Kim-Son Nguyen Zebras, Hao Zhu The Last Prayer, Joan S. Hu Limitations, Greg Feldman Autopsy, Christine Hsu Rohde It Was Sunday, Tracy Balboni Transitions, Kristin L. Leight Imagine How You'd Feel, Andrea Dalve-Endres Squeeze Hard, Brook Hill Code, Joan S. Hu. The Heart of Medicine, Annemarie Stroustrup SmitnIV. Finding a Better Way Black Bags, Kurt Smith A Murmur in the ICU, Joe Wright Rewiring, Mohummad Minhaj Siddiqui Taking My Place in Medicine, Antonia Jocelyn Henry Identity, Alex Lam The Outsider, Charles Wykoff Raincoat, Anonymous Physicians or Escape Artists? Sachin H. Jain The Healing Circle, Chelsea Flanagan Elander Bodnar Strong Work, Walter Anthony Bethune I Would Do It All Again, Gloria Chiang Growing Up, Vesna Ivanĉić Epilogue About the Authors Acknowledgments Permissions Copyright Page.

True stories of transitioning from medical school classrooms to the realities of the hospital: "Moving, eloquent, and often unforgettable" (Atul Gawande, MD). After years of practice, doctors can sometimes seem aloof, uncaring, and hurried. What goes on in their minds? Were they always like that, or has their work changed them? And how do some physicians manage to retain their warmth and humanity over the course of a long career? This "thoughtful and illuminating" book takes us into the day-to-day lives of third-year medical students at an Ivy League school—just starting out in their profession and dealing with patients face-to-face for the first time ( Publishers Weekly ). In their own words, more than forty of them reveal what it's really like to enter this field, having their principles of scientific rigor and idealism tested as they cope with real people and real crises in real time. This doctor's-eye-view of the dramas—and occasional comedies—of the world of health care offers fascinating insights about clinical medicine and a behind-the-scenes look at a job that can range from repetitive routines to life-and-death decisions at any given moment. These stories "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" (Atul Gawande, MD, New York Times –bestselling author of Being Mortal ). "Thoughtful and illuminating." — Publishers Weekly