The Soul Of A Doctor: Harvard Medical Students Face Life And Death

You're in a hospital trying for the first time to be a doctor. No more textbook diagrams and classroom cadavers; this is the real thing, in real time. You've got a patient who's convinced that her illness is the same one that she saw once on "Oprah" and is turning down all other tests. A young woman is being told she'll have to sacrifice one baby to save the other. And you just told another patient she might have cancer but left her panicked when you had to rush off. How do you handle all this and stay sane, and then somehow become a good doctor? Here are candid firsthand accounts of the profound experiences that transform medical students into doctors--for better or worse--right at the bedside.

By the time most of us meet our doctors, they've been in practice for a number of years. Often they seem aloof, uncaring, and hurried. Of course, they're not all like that, and most didn't start out that way.
Here are voices of third-year students just as they begin to take on clinical responsibilities. Their words focus on the odd transition students face when they must deal with real people in real time and in real crises and when they must learn to put aside their emotions to make quick, accurate, and sensitive decisions. Their decisions aren't always right, and the consequences can be life-altering--for all involved. Moving, disturbing, and candid, their true stories show us a side of the profession that few ever see, or could even imagine. They show, often painfully, how medical students grow up, right at the bedside.