Becoming a Better Physician - by Mark Allan Goldstein & Kathy May Tran (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book offers insights from doctors and doctors-to-be about successes they've enjoyed and obstacles they've faced, personal and professional. Some of these essays are easy to celebrate, and others are painful to absorb. All encourage the reader to reflect upon their own stories, embrace vulnerabilities, forgive shortcomings, celebrate resilience, and, by doing so, become a better physician.

The topics covered in these essays are divided into six chapters titled Learning and Training, Career, Caregiving, Physician as Patient, Personal Growth, and Love and Loss. Authors discuss a wide range of experiences that include combining marriage and residency, navigating racism, honing communication, forging relationships with patients and colleagues, battling addiction, getting fired, facing death, and more.

Becoming a Better Physician is a beautifully written volume that will enlighten physicians, future physicians, and anyone interested in learning how physicians grow as medical professionals and as human beings.

Read the Editors' discussion of the book with Harvard Medicine Magazine here: https: //magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/medicine-burnout-and-stories-doctors-tell

From the Back Cover

This book shares physicians' stories, both challenging to read and easy to celebrate, to encourage the reader to reflect upon their own stories and by doing so, become a better physician.

These illuminating and revealing essays have been divided into six chapters, each with its own theme: Learning and Training, Career, Caregiving, Physician as Patient, Personal Growth, and Love and Loss. There are thirty-nine essays, each covering a different aspect of the theme of their chapter. An author in Learning and Training relates the difficulties and successes they had in their marriage throughout their residency and how it has affected them as a physician. Career reveals the story of a doctor who dealt with employer retribution over publicly expressing his views on healthcare, and another who questions what "work-life balance" really means. In Physician as Patient, we are reminded that doctors have strengths and weaknesses and are human.

Becoming a Better Physician is a beautifully written insight into the lives of the physician authors that encourages the reader to reflect on their own story, embrace vulnerabilities, forgive shortcomings, celebrate resilience, and build community. This volume will be an enlightening read for physicians, future physicians, and anyone interested in learning about the physician's point of view.

About the Author

Mark Allan Goldstein, M.D.
Founding Chief Emeritus, Division of Adolescent & Young Adult Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Goldstein practiced pediatrics, adolescent medicine, and family medicine for over 45 years in settings that included a rural health clinic adjacent to the Navajo reservation in New Mexico and academic medical centers in Boston, Massachusetts. He has taught countless medical students, residents, and fellows over his career. Dr. Goldstein's papers have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, the Journal of Adolescent Health, Academic Psychiatry, and other publications. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 18 books for professional or general audiences.

Kathy May Tran, M.D.
Hospitalist, Massachusetts General Hospital
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Associate Editor, Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital, New England Journal of Medicine

Dr. Tran is a Vietnamese American from the Deep South who serves patients and teaches trainees in the city of Boston, Massachusetts and indigenous nations in Rosebud, South Dakota and Kotzebue, Alaska. She prioritizes workforce well-being by leading programs for community building, music and medicine, diversity and equity, and storytelling--personal, professional, and academic. In addition to writing and editing the historic Case Records in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Tran is the co-editor of 50 Studies Every Hospitalist Should Know (Oxford University Press) and the founder and director of the storytelling series Stories of the Massachusetts General Hospital.