Summary:

Gathered from four years of volumes of the journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, this collection of short prose essays and poetry written by health care providers (largely physicians) covers almost the entire range of the experience of doctoring, from personal illness and illness in the physician’s family, to all the joys and sorrows inherent in practicing medicine. Seventy-three entries make up the collection, which has been divided into six categories: The Doctor Trains and Lives His Life; She Relates to Family and Friends; He Deals with His Own Illness; She Relates to Her Patients; He Confronts Death; They Find Doctors Good and Bad; and Search for a Mentor. The longest essay is less than six pages in length and most of them are two to three pages.

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