MD Jerome E. Groopman - The soul of a doctor: harvard medical students face life and death

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.

EDITORS

SUSAN PORIES, MD, is an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. She is a breast cancer surgeon, surgical educator, and scientific investigator. Dr. Pories has been named in the Guide to Americas Top Surgeons and is a Scholar in the Academy at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on biomarkers for the early detection of breast cancer. She dedicates this book to her family for all their support. She will donate her proceeds from this book to breast cancer research.

SACHIN H. JAIN is an MD/MBA candidate and Soros Fellow at Harvard University, where he has served as president of the Harvard Medical School Student Council. In 2002, Sachin received his BA magna cum laude in government from Harvard College. As an undergraduate, Sachin cofounded a health care clinic for the homeless and was named a John Kenneth Galbraith Scholar. He was awarded an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship to support his work with the homeless, as well as a Presidents Discretionary Fund grant from the Commonwealth Fund to lead the development of a health policy education program for medical students. He presently cochairs the Harvard/Commonwealth Health Policy Education Initiative in the medical schools Department of Health Care Policy. Sachin was born in New York in 1980 to naturalized parents from India, who live in Alpine, New Jersey. Sachin plans to pursue a career as a clinician, scholar, and activist dedicated to improving access to quality health care. He would like to thank Sameer Doshi, Dr. Howard Hiatt, and Ankit Patel for their poignant suggestions on the text of the introduction. Sachin would like to dedicate this book to Subhash Jain, MD, the best physician, and Sarla Jain, the best caregiver he knows.

GORDON HARPER, MD, is an associate professor of psychiatry. Dr. Harper, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He trained in pediatrics and child psychiatry at Childrens Hospital in Boston and in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Harper was the director of the Patient-Doctor III course for many years. He also mentors residents in pediatrics and child psychiatry at Childrens Hospital. In 1997, Dr. Harper received the Award for Teaching Excellence from child psychiatry fellows at Childrens Hospital.

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 womens 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 womens 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 Womens 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 Womens 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 Ivani 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.