By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.Over the next two weeks in hospitals and medical centers across the country, new medical school graduates will begin their internship. Among their many worries — moving to a new city, meeting new colleagues, adjusting to medical training — is a more profound, existential concern that had once plagued me.
Do I have to lose my self in order to become the doctor I want to be?
I learned the answer to that question partway through my internship. Not in the hospital but in the checkout line of a local grocery store.
The customer in front of me was an older woman — she wore a faux camel-hair coat and had hair dyed a matching color. I remember that she had wanted her groceries bagged in a particular fashion, but the sales clerk, a young woman with impossibly long pink acrylics, was perplexed by the woman’s demands. Read entire article HERE.
Filed under: Medical Education | Tagged: clerkships
