The Yale Guide to Careers in Medicine and the Health Professions: Pathways to Medicine in the Twenty-First Century

The Institution for Social and Policy Studies

by Robert M. Donaldson Jr., Kathleen S. Lundgren (Editor), Howard M. Spiro (Editor)

Can I become a doctor? Should I? How can I find out? What is it like to be in medical school? What other careers in the health field might be right for me? What are the satisfactions and pitfalls of a career in medicine?

For anyone pondering a career in medicine or a related health profession, this book is an invaluable guide. It contains the firsthand advice of men and women working in the health field today. These diverse professionals describe how and why they made their career choices and what the journey has been like. They tell their stories with candor and humor, sharing their personal circumstances, experiences, uncertainties, and triumphs.

More than seventy medical and health professionals, including physicians, biomedical researchers, nurses, chiropractors, medical sociologists, and others, contribute to the volume. They represent many individual viewpoints and speak from different stages of their careers. The distilled wisdom of this group conveys more comprehensively and openly than ever before what it means to choose a career in medicine.

471 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2003

Reviews

[Akmal]

When you find yourself devoid of thought and a sense of direction, the first rationale is to pick up a relevant book. I wish to have indoctrinated this notion earlier in my pre-medical journey, as a freshman or better, even earlier. In my search for direction and the most meaningful route to a career in this field, I was tasked to piece together the same facts and guidelines laid abound in this book scattered in pieces throughout my four years in college. This book is a well-organized assemblage of statements from everyone you’d want to hear as a pre-med. It is to those who can relate to my younger self that I recommend this book.

[Eva Howard]

The Yale Guide to Careers in Medicine and the Health Professions: Pathways to Medicine in the 21st Century sounds like it would be a boring handbook on how to choose among different career possibilities in the health care industry. Instead, however, it is a collection of vignettes written by a slew of physicians with different specialties, physician's assistants, nurses, medical school professors, M.D./J.D.'s, M.D./Ph.D's, social workers, and so on. As nerdy as it sounds, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was lengthy, but I read it cover to cover, devouring it in one day. One of the reasons I liked this book so much is that it gave me an all-around view of the process of becoming a doctor; it talked about getting into medical school/requirements, medical school itself, picking a specialty, internship, residency, etc. The chapters were the perfect length. The ups and downs of being a physician were discussed as well. Another reason I enjoyed this book is that it opened my mind to a world of possibilities in the field of health care. Prior to reading this book, I really wanted to be a doctor; I figured it would mix my desire to help people with my interest in science. After reading it, though, I realized there are so many different careers that I could pursue instead of being a physician that still involve health care. Although now this book is slightly outdated, the man who edited this book put together a great range of essays for the reader.