Becoming a Doctor

Caring for patients is a privilege. Learning how to assist and watch patients as they grapple with the challenges and joys life dishes out is a process. If we are paying attention, we gain insights into our own struggles. Medical students from across Minnesota reflect on their experiences in the anatomy lab and the library, on the hospital wards and in clinic exam rooms. Their musings represent the universal experience of learning to negotiate the path of becoming a physician. Discussion questions are included.

Caring for patients is a privilege. Learning how to assist and watch patients as they grapple with the challenges and joys life dishes out is a process. If we are paying attention, we gain insights into our own struggles. Medical students from across Minnesota reflect on their experiences in the anatomy lab and the library, on the hospital wards and in clinic exam rooms. Their musings represent the universal experience of learning to negotiate the path of becoming a physician. Several share insights about healing from their own experiences as patients. Some reflect on their times abroad and how caring for patients in those settings gave them insights into their interactions with patients at home in the US. Others examine being different and ministering to patients dissimilar from themselves, a reality in today’s global world. This collection will encourage students considering medicine as a career, inspire other medical students, reinvigorate those in practice and delight readers who are curious about the process of becoming a doctor. Discussion questions are included.

For the last ten years, Dr. Therese Zink, a family physician, has written award-winning stories on doctoring that have been published in both literary and medical journals and anthologies. She is the editor of The Country Doctor Revisited: A 21st Century Reader (Kent State University, 2010), stories, poems and essays about rural health care today. www.thecountrydoctorrevisited.com She encourages and assists medical students with reflection on their experiences as student doctors, writing and publishing their narratives. She cares for patients, teaches, does research and works as a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota. A national expert on family violence, she has received foundation and government funding to examine how health care providers can improve care of families living with violence. She serves on the Governor’s Health Care Reform Task Force (2011-12). In 2012, she received the Distinguished Educator award from the National Rural Health Association. Her goal in assembling this unique collection was to provide a literary portrait of the many steps along the path to becoming a physician. Voices from medical students across Minnesota reflect on the challenge, privilege and joy of learning to negotiate the path. Dr. Zink’s hope is that the collection will inspire other medical students, reinvigorate those in practice and delight readers.