Syllabi: The Doctor's Life; Literature and Medicine

TITLE: The Doctor's Life; Literature and Medicine

INSTITUTION: Dartmouth Medical School

INSTRUCTOR: Naj Wikoff (email: naj.wikoff@dartmouth.edu)

FACULTY SPONSOR: Joe O'Donnell, M.D.

ENROLLMENT: Year 1 & 2 medical students; elective; limit: 16

SEMESTER: Fall 1997

Time, schedule, and meeting place to be announced

LEARNING GOALS:

Through reading and discussing significant literature regarding various aspects of medicine, we will look at physicians as fellow human beings, graced with various opportunities, shadowed by various hazards, be they personal and idiosyncratic or social and cultural. We will look at the particular vocational challenges medical careers: the healer's advantages and privileges, and too, the vulnerabilities and impasses, the possibilities for mis-steps and worse, that present themselves in the midst of professional life.

METHOD OF INSTRUCTION:

Readings, discussions, guest speakers (authors - several drawn from the professional staff at DHMC) and written & oral presentations by the participants.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

The course will explore the issues of doctoring - what it means to be a doctor - through readings and discussions of world literature.

REQUIREMENTS: Evaluation based on participation in the discussion (issues raised), submitting a final reflection on the readings, and attendance.

PREREQUISITES: None

TOTAL CREDIT HOURS: 12

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: The Doctor as Protagonist (William Carlos Williams); The Patient as Protagonist - (Tillie Olsen, Robert Coles, MaryOliver); Death as Protagonist - (Tolstoy and Raymond Carver); The Doctor, the Patient as an Outsider - (Chekhov, Kafka and Toni Morrison); The Professional Life (Ignazio Silone, Jonathan Ross, Albert Schweitzer); Medicine as a personal Search (Albert Camus and Walker Percy) are examples of some of the topics and authors that will be covered.

These writers address various aspects of what it means to be a doctor, to live a doctor's life, do a doctor's work - the pleasures and satisfactions, the difficulties, hurdles and trials. Participation in this course will provide a stimulating insight into a doctor's life and, in so doing, provide tools for developing a richer and more satisfying career.