Life After Medical School: Thirty-Two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers

Directed to medical students as a guide to choosing their disciplines, the overarching theme here is, ""Physician, know thyself,"" with 32 of them reminiscing about their backgrounds and why they chose their specialties and discussing their daily work. The pieces are written as first-person narratives, fashioned by Laster, founder and chancellor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, who conducted the interviews so deftly that self-revealing personalities emerge. Readers discern connections between specialty and character; those who treat, say, HIV and cancer patients sound especially sensitive, while the pathologist and radiologist, who have little ongoing patient contact, seem to be more interested in medicine as science. The physicians include women and African Americans and run the gamut from psychiatrists (among them, Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac) to surgeons and pediatricians. Also here are physicians who no longer practice, such as Howard Dean, governor of Vermont, and Arnold Relman, editor-in-chief emeritus of the New England Journal of Medicine. Many of the physicians are strongly critical of interference from insurers in the doctor-patient relationship, yet only one physician here practices with an HMO, an area that should have been more fully explored. (Apr.)