Becoming a Doctor: From Student to Specialist, Doctor-Writers Share Their Experiences

Physicians recount true, personal stories from their professional lives in this inspired anthology by new and known writers. In this poignant collection, doctors who are writers (and vice versa) relate their real-life journeys from intern to specialist, student to teacher, reflecting on the rewards, disillusionments, and triumphs encountered along the way. Featuring a wide array of distinguished voices, including Peter Kramer, Kay Redfield Jamison, Robert Coles, Lauren Slater, Sandeep Jauhar, and Perri Klass, these original stories create a vivid mural of the medical world and provide invaluable insight for both doctors in training and longtime physicians. Becoming a Doctor portrays the broad arc of a doctor’s life, from a medical student’s uneasy first encounter with a cadaver and her realization that the experience’s redemption will lie ahead in the lives saved, to a resident’s reliance on dance during her grueling year in an inner-city hospital, and a veteran doctor’s profound ruminations on what it means to really listen to a patient’s story.