
Product Details
- Publisher: WW Norton (2022-05-03)
- Language: English
- Paperback: 320 pages
- ISBN-13: 9781324021902
- Item Weight: 249.48 grams
- Dimensions: 8.25 x 5.49 x 0.78 cm
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of 2021
A poignant and funny exploration of authenticity in work and life by a woman doctor.
In 2017, Dr. Suzanne Koven published an essay describing the challenges faced by female physicians, including her own personal struggle with "imposter syndrome"—a long-held secret belief that she was not smart enough or good enough to be a “real” doctor. Accessed by thousands of readers around the world, Koven’s “Letter to a Young Female Physician” has evolved into a deeply felt reflection on her career in medicine.
Koven tells candid and illuminating stories about her pregnancy during a grueling residency in the AIDS era; the illnesses of her child and aging parents during which her roles as a doctor, mother, and daughter converged, and sometimes collided; the sexism, pay inequity, and harassment that women in medicine encounter; and the twilight of her career during the COVID-19 pandemic. As she traces the arc of her life, Koven finds inspiration in literature and faces the near-universal challenges of burnout, body image, and balancing work with marriage and parenthood.
Shining with warmth, clarity, and wisdom, Letter to a Young Female Physician reveals a woman forging her authentic identity in a modern landscape that is as overwhelming and confusing as it is exhilarating in its possibilities. Koven offers an indelible account, by turns humorous and profound, from a doctor, mother, wife, daughter, teacher, and writer who sheds light on our desire to find meaning, and on a way to be our own imperfect selves in the world.
About the Author
Suzanne Koven is a primary care physician and the inaugural writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her writing has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Boston Globe, and other publications. A faculty member at Harvard Medical School, she lives near Boston.