Product Description

This Side of Doctoring: Reflections for Women in Medicine offers up an intimate collection of stories, poems, essays, and quotations that captures the joy and heartbreak of being women and being a physician. Editor Eliza Lo Chin (MD, Harvard Medical School) has gathered more than 100 voices that speak to the trials, rewards, and surprises of practicing medicine. Beginning with the writings of early medical pioneers, the anthology weaves a rich patchwork of experiences. Raw and honest, This Side of Doctoring acquaints us with worlds we could otherwise only imagine. Throughout these pages you'll find the expressions of courage, doubt, fatigue, perseverance, frustration, and triumph that make up the lives of women physicians. These are the stories of choosing a life in medicine and the many roadmaps that women follow in living that life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #596857 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-20
• Released on: 2001-12-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 424 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Any woman contemplating a career as a physician or already working in the profession will gain a good deal of insight from this collection of personal essays and poems by female physicians over the last century and a half. Organized into categories such as "Internship and Residency," "Mothering and Doctoring," and "Barriers," the anthology presents feminine and feminist perspectives on all aspects of a medical career. Most of the pieces are contemporary and previously unpublished, solicited by Chin, an internist and former Columbia University medical professor. In her essay "We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Men as Medical Mentors," pediatrician and author (Her Own Medicine) Sayantani DasGupta describes how her search for a "female" professional mentor turned up a vital male role model instead. Psychiatrist Bhuvana Chandra's evocative poem recalls how much it meant to her father that she became a doctor. Several pieces deal with reconciling the commitment to patients with the commitment to family life, such as Molly Carnes's down-to-earth "Balancing Family and Career: Advice from the Trenches." Chin also provides a historical overview of the barriers that faced 19th-century women physicians like Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from an American medical school, and Harriet Hunt, whose recollections are among the archival pieces featured in the anthology. This is an engaging and frequently inspiring collection.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
Like a patchwork quilt, this richly-textured compilation represents each woman's extraordinary life and career while their common experiences clearly emerge, cutting across different specialties, ages, and geographic divides. Academic Library Book Review

Book Info
Offers a collection of stories, poems, essays, and quotations capturing the joy and heartbreak of being a woman and being a physician. Begins with the writings of early medical pioneers and covers making choices, barriers, mothering and doctoring, internship and residency, and more.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful anthology that tells "our" side of the story
Of course, in a book with this many contributors, the writing is a bit uneven. but the overall effect is wonderful. Actually, it is somewhat surprising that there is relatively little non-fiction about men physicians. About women, there is practically nothing. This volume tries to cover everything, from the first "lady" doctors to graduate from medical school to the multiple paths medical study takes now that about 50% of medical school classes are women. The pulls between family and practice are well described. Some women choose not to have children of their own. I was especially struck by the story of an orthopedic surgeon who sacrificed 20 years of her life to be one of the boys and then hit the glass ceiling with a crash. Fortunately, she found a good position at another academic center. How many do not? I loved the editor's poem, which both in form and in words illustrated the family/physician duality. There are too many to cite in a review. I recently talked to my daughter about how much I disliked the use of "female" doctor instead of woman doctor. She said, "Why don't you just call them "doctor?" I'm afraid we're not there yet. Women tend to crowd into psychiatry, pediatrics, and now internal medicine and even ob/gyn. This volume illustrates in many ways what we can hope is to be a total success story.

Excellent 150 year history of women in medicine.
This Side Of Doctoring: Reflections From Women In Medicine showcases a superbly presented and collection of stories, poems, and essays capturing what it means to be a female physician. Ranging from pioneering lady doctors to today's increasing numbers of women medical students, This Side Of Doctoring explores and reveals the struggles and triumphs of women in the past 150 years of western medicine. Included are intimate sketches of the contributors personal lives and experiences that seldom (if ever) appear in traditional, male oriented medical writings and histories. This Side Of Doctoring is strongly recommended for personal, professional, and academic reading lists and reference collections, especially in the areas and disciplines of Medical History and Women's Studies.

A wonderful resource and support for women physicians.
Having recently graduated residency with two young children, I couldn't stop reading this book. I want to plaster these essays on the cover of the Wall Street Journal: this is why medical training has to change! I am buying this book for all of my friends.