kw: book reviews, physicians, articles, essays
Beacon Press has published a delightful account of a Doctor's real education at the hands of her "patients." The title of this post is from the last phrase of the second chapter/essay/story (it is a wonderful sign when you can't quite classify a document, yet find it compelling reading).
Dr. Danielle Ofri, in Incidental Findings: Lessons from My Patients in the Art of Medicine gathers story/essays she's published over a decade or so, and a few current stories written "in real time." She didn't become an Attending Physician at New York's Bellevue Hospital by following any beaten path. She made her own path. After earning MD and PhD, and completing a residency at Bellevue, she alternated travel—mainly in Latin America, turning schooldays Spanish into a real second language—with temporary assignments at clinics in several small towns, whose locations fairly bracket the US.
Despite the overwhelming pressures on this generation of physicians, to run patients through in as assembly-line fashion as possible, to distance oneself from immense suffering, she has frequently made human connection with one person after another, going beyond "learning the human body" to learning the human.
From a woman whose terrible acne expresses her crushing poverty and abuse; to a suburban girl struggling with an abortion decision; to a once-prominent man reduced to a frail shell, yet having lost none of the drive—nor intolerance for fools—that made his empire; Dr. Ofri learns from them all, "...to envision patients beyond their role as sick people."
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