The Soul of a Doctor
Page 17
JEROME E. GROOPMAN, MD, is the Recanati Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. His most recent book is The Anatomy of Hope.
ESSAY AUTHORS
Amy Antman is currently a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. She is applying for residency in pediatric neurology.
Tracy Balboni is currently a resident in the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program. Now entering a year of training dedicated to research, she will be investigating the spiritual needs of cancer patients at the end of life. She is also attending the Harvard School of Public Health to earn an MPH degree with the aim of refining the skills needed for this research.
Walter Anthony graduated from Harvard Medical School in June of 2005 and is currently doing a preliminary medical internship at Mount Auburn Hospital before pursuing residency training in anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Anh Bui just started residency in internal medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.
Alejandra Casillas graduated from Harvard Medical School and has started her residency in internal medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. She plans to pursue a career in immigrant health and women’s health advocacy. She would like to thank her family for always supporting her dreams of becoming a doctor.
Gloria Chiang is currently spending her fourth year at Harvard Medical School doing elective rotations and conducting molecular-imaging research at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is planning on a career in interventional neuroradiology.
Kimberly Layne Collins spent the summer of 2005 abroad in Uganda working at a clinic for orphaned children before returning to Harvard Medical School to begin her second year.
Joseph Corkery graduated from Harvard Medical School on June 9, 2005, and has elected to pursue a nonclinical path for the time being. He has returned to OpenEye Scientific Software (where he worked during his two years off from medical school). He is currently developing software to improve the drug discovery process.
Andrea Dalve-Endres is in her fourth year of medical school. As she had thought entering medical school, she now knows that obstetrics-gynecology is the specialty for her. She will be heading off to Guatemala for a month to refine her Spanish skills and work with women’s health projects.
Chelsea Flanagan Elander Bodnar is a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, applying for residency in pediatrics.
Greg Feldman has crossed the country to begin his residency in general surgery at Stanford.
Antonia Jocelyn Henry completed two subinternships in general surgery over the summer of 2005 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. She is currently completing her fourth-year electives and applying for residency in general surgery.
Brook Hill is a diagnostic radiology resident at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida.
Christine Hsu Rohde completed a plastic surgery residency at Montefiore Medical Center after undergoing general surgery training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is currently a microsurgery fellow at NYU Medical Center. After this year, she hopes to get a position as an academic plastic surgeon. She wrote this poem during her surgical pathology rotation in medical school.
Joan S. Hu is starting as an intern in categorical general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. She graduated from Harvard Medical School in June of 2005. Her future interest will likely be cardiac or thoracic surgery.
Esther Huang is finishing her fourth year at Harvard Medical School and applying for a residency in ophthalmology. She continues to enjoy writing when the inspiration strikes, usually regarding medicine, healing, and faith.
David Y. Hwang is now a senior MD candidate at Harvard Medical School. He will be pursuing a career as a neurologist when he graduates in 2006.
Vesna Ivančić is a surgical resident studying urology in California. It is her understanding that this will soon translate into saving lives left and right by operating on kidneys, prostates, and bladders. Currently, however, she admits life consists mainly of rectal exams and prostate biopsies, and she finds inspiration, as she did in medical school, in the operating room and in the stories of her patients.
Alex Lam finished a preliminary year in internal medicine at Boston Medical Center and has begun training in emergency medicine, also at BMC. In his free time, he enjoys hanging out with friends, working off the endless snacks he finds at the nurses’ station, and traveling.
Kristin L. Leight is a second-year resident in psychiatry at Columbia/New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her interests include mood disorders, perinatal and reproductive psychiatry, and psychosocial oncology. She also has an MA in classics and English literature from Oxford University.
Matt Lewis is finishing his core clerkships and will begin a Zuckerman Fellowship in public health at Harvard School of Public Health starting in September 2005. He is interested in pursuing a career in oncology.
Wai-Kit Lo will receive his MD from Harvard Medical School in June 2006. He is considering a number of career options, including gastroenterology, oncology, and general surgery, and hopes to incorporate creative writing into his career. He would like to dedicate the essay contained in this volume to his parents, Chor-Pang and Christine Lo.
Kedar Mate graduated from Harvard Medical School and began his internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in internal medicine. He was recently in New Delhi working on HIV and tsunami relief operations for the World Health Organization.
Keith Walter Michael was raised on the prairie in Tucson, Arizona, alongside his two sisters. He studied chemical engineering and the history of science in college and is currently a fourth-year student at Harvard Medical School, hoping to train in orthopedic surgery.
Amanda A. Muñoz took a year away from medical school as a Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellow. She is currently back on the wards completing her fourth-year rotations at Harvard Medical School. She will graduate in the spring of 2006 and hopes to do her residency in otolaryngology—head and neck surgery.
Kim-Son Nguyen has taken this academic year off from Harvard Medical School to study for a master’s in public policy with a focus on international development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government before returning to HMS in the summer, when he will apply for residency in internal medicine.
Yana Pikman is currently conducting hematology research. She will graduate from medical school in 2007 and hopes to do residency training in pediatrics. The patients she met were the most effective teachers, about both life and medicine.
Alaka Ray has finished her third year at Harvard Medical School and will be spending the coming year on several worthy pursuits, such as completing a project about end-of-life care in cancer patients, getting married in Kolkata, India, and cultivating a sense of humor about the world. She will then return for her final year as a medical student. Her interest currently lies in the field of oncology, but she will never deny that almost all aspects of medicine fascinate her.
Rajesh G. Shah is currently a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School and plans to pursue a residency in anesthesiology with the goal of practicing pain management. He hopes to better the lives of his patients by treating their pain, advocating for increased awareness of pain-related issues in medical practice, and working toward the destigmatization of the use of pain medication. His future professional goals include further writing and the integration of novel computer technologies into medical practice. He is particularly grateful for his loving family, without whose support nothing would be possible.
Mohummad Minhaj Siddiqui is a fourth-year medical student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He plans to apply for residency in urology with a concurrent academic interest in kidney tissue engineering research. When not in the hospital, he enjoys sleeping, with the occasional interest in skiing and kayaking.
Kurt Smith, MD, completed his degree with honors in June 2005 and is currently a resident
in emergency medicine at University Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he continues to both learn and reflect on the art and practice of medicine and work as a full-time husband and father.
Annemarie Stroustrup Smith graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 2005. She is completing her residency in pediatrics at the Kravis Children’s Hospital at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.
Yetsa Kehinde Tuakli-Wosornu is a fourth-year medical student, recently named Stanley J. Sarnoff Fellow. Over the next year, she will be conducting cardiovascular research under the auspices of the fellowship.
Ari Wassner graduated from Harvard Medical School and began his internship in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston. He lives in Cambridge.
Mike Westerhaus completed his third year of medical school at Harvard Medical School. He spent two months doing a clinical rotation and anthropological fieldwork at a hospital in northern Uganda. This past academic year, he completed a master’s in medical anthropology at Harvard and wrote a thesis on the competing theories of HIV transmission and how ideology plays into the formation of those theories. He drew heavily on his experiences in northern Uganda, which has been at war for eighteen years. He has returned to Harvard Medical School for his fourth year of medical school and will graduate in June 2006. He then plans to start a residency in internal medicine.
Joe Wright is a fourth-year student who can often be heard as a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He spent his third year of medical school as one of a group of eight Harvard Medical School students in a pilot program based at the Cambridge Health Alliance that emphasized longitudinal relationships with patients and teachers. He is currently planning a range of clinical electives, from trauma surgery to psychiatry, and intends to make his fourth year into two years.
Charles Wykoff is an internal medicine resident at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He will be moving to Miami, Florida, in June 2006 to begin his ophthalmology residency at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. He and his wife are also in the midst of being new parents, raising their daughter, Julia.
Hao Zhu is currently an internal medicine resident at UCSF.
Acknowledgments
THE EDITORS WOULD LIKE TO THANK all the students who were willing to share their very personal and meaningful essays. And we are indebted to Kathy Pories, our wonderful editor at Algonquin, for her wisdom and patience.
Permissions
“Learning to Interview” by Joe Wright. First broadcast on National Public Radio. Copyright by Joe Wright. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Difficult Patient” by Anh Bui. First published in Current Surgery 61(2): 178–79. Copyright © 2004 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“An Emotional War on the Wards” by David Y. Hwang. First published in Current Surgery 60(5): 543–44. Copyright © 2003 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Giving Bad News” by Amanda A. Muñoz. First published in Current Surgery 62(1): 71. Copyright © 2005 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Inshallah” by Yetsa Kehinde Tuakli-Wosornu. First published in Current Surgery 62(6). Copyright © 2005 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“On Saying Sorry” by Alejandra Casillas. First published in Current Surgery 61(5): 478–79. Copyright © 2004 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Reclaiming the Lost Art of Listening” by Mike Westerhaus. First published in Current Surgery 62(4): 447. Copyright © 2005 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Breathing, the Movie” by Joe Wright. First broadcast on National Public Radio. Copyright by Joe Wright. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Limitations” by Greg Feldman. First published in Current Surgery 59(5): 498. Copyright © 2002 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“The Tortoise and the Air” by Vesna Ivančić. First published in Current Surgery 58(2): 237–40. Copyright © 2001. The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“It was Sunday” by Tracy Balboni. First published in Current Surgery 59(1): 84–85. Copyright © 2002 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“The Last Prayer” by Joan S. Hu. First published in Current Surgery 61(6): 592–93. Copyright © 2004. The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Autopsy” by Christine Hsu Rhode. First published in Current Surgery 55(2): 87. Copyright © 1998. The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Transitions” by Kristin L. Leight. First published in Current Surgery 60(2): 174–75. Copyright © 2003. The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Code” by Joan S. Hu. First published in Current Surgery 62(3):351–52. Copyright © 2005 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“Growing Up” by Vesna Ivančić. First published in Current Surgery 58(4): 414–16. Copyright © 2001. The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
“A Murmur in the ICU” by Joe Wright. First broadcast on National Public Radio. Copyright by Joe Wright. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Identity” by Alex Lam. First published in Current Surgery 60(4): 470–71. Copyright © 2003 The Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Used by permission of Elsevier.
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