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

Lee Gutkind

Mar 2010 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

“As wise as it is well written. . . . A sustaining work of art.” —Linda Elisabeth Beattie, Courier-Journal In this inspired anthology, doctors relate true stories from their professional lives, capturing disillusionments and triumphs encountered along the way. Essays by such distinguished writers as Peter D. Kramer, Kay Redfield Jamison, Danielle Ofri, Robert Coles, Lauren Slater, Sandeep Jauhar, and Perri Klass create a vivid mural of the medical world, from a student’s uneasy first encounter with a cadaver to a veteran doctor’s memories of the emotionally charged days and nights of residency.

Ratings and reviews

I personally loved this book. All essays are very well written and it is wonderful to find out what it is that brought doctors to choose their profession. I am not a medical student or a doctor, but I enjoyed the book and found that is a good way to appreciate your physician and learn about the hardships they go through and all the decisions they have to make in their career, starting from when they are medical students. I recommend this book to everyone.

About the author

Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction and a pioneer in the field of narrative nonfiction. Gutkind is also the editor of In Fact and Becoming a Doctor, the author of Almost Human, and has written books about baseball, health care, travel, and technology. A Distinguished Writer in Residence at Arizona State University, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Tempe, Arizona.