IN TRAINING

The Interns and Residents

The nurse/doctors in this section, those most recently out of medical school, are training in several different specialties. Phyllis Dodson was doing an internship year of internal medicine before completing an ophthalmology residency. Dr. C was also in her internship year, but of an OB/GYN residency. Dr. D was a second year resident in family practice, but she'd dropped out for a year after her internship and the birth of her child, and was doing a "part-time" residency.

The transition to physician has to happen on many levels--of knowledge, of responsibility, of autonomy. This early in their training, they haven't achieved a complete ease with being doctors. Sometimes they still feel like nurses, and act like nurses. Sometimes the personal issues--like class and ambition, or family obligations and individual expectations--are the most difficult passages of all.

These three women have been around medicine long enough to have decided opinions about medical school, residency training, and especially about how difficult it is to fit your personal life into medicine, or the other way around. Residency training is always difficult, and each of these women is aware of how her residency compares with programs of former years and different places. This subject arose with almost every nurse/doctor, because it is an issue which often, not always in beneficial ways, shaped her future.

Two of these women come from health care families. All three of them had done some work in intensive care units as nurses. All of them expressed great interest in public health issues. These factors--personal and professional background, a wider view of health care--arise throughout the book. Here, in their earliest years of training, these nurse/doctors offer insights which will be echoed and disputed and expanded in the following narratives. Phyllis Dodson didn't think she was smart enough to go to medical school. But working as a nurse, knowing her own capabilities, made her realize that she longed for the respect that doctors automatically received. Even though she has achieved her goal of becoming a doctor, her choice of specialty has been dictated by the needs of her young family.

Dr. C chose nursing for the financial independence it would provide. But her experience of nursing was in a unique voluntary service setting which had more to do with providing community support than gaining economic ground. Moving on to medicine was a natural intellectual step for her.

Dr. D. went to medical school because of a dream she had. Right before starting her internship year, this unmarried woman discovered she was pregnant. Her unique take on medicine is highly colored by her personal experiences of love and motherhood.