Book Outline
Dr. Michael Collins, an Orthopedic Surgeon, now 73 gives the account of his residency at the famed Mayo Clinic when he was 30-34 years old, married and had four children, heald moonlighting jobs, drove cars that died and got towed to the junkyard, and endured 100 hour work weeks. The stories from the emergency room and various services tug at the heart as the good doctor retells the stories of patients too young to die and patients too callous to care for their own health. Residency is the fire that purifies and shapes the character of the doctors who never give up and fight death on behalf of every patient in their care.
Core Message
Medical education and training are grueling ascents up the Everest. If it’s not your passion to cure patients and serve humanity, don’t do it. The demands to learn, practice, and be accountable are ravenous to the body and taxing to the soul. And the pay is miserable for the duration of the training. For those driven to serve, learning, growth, problem-solving, and innovation come naturally. The doctors, embarked on a noble mission to cure their patients, challenge the limits of their creativity, and chase their curiosity to find treatment options and technical advances. When the training ends, the rewards for performance are deeply satisfying in professional and personal life, and in earnings as well.
How do these concepts compare with points raised in other books?
Most of the books addressing the life of medical professions today speak of high mental, physical, and financial cost of the very long educational and training credentialing journey. This book does that too. However, the honest accounting of Dr. Collins’s professional and personal life makes the book engaging and spellbinding.
What the book does well.
It provides the raw and unvarnished window into a young family’s journey as Dr. Collins passes his last hurdle to having career options he has worked for all his life. The hospital’s protocols and how his fellow residents collaborate to cover for his moonlighting job while he struggles to provide for his young and growing family. It shows the wisdom of doctors when things go wrong. The senior doctors inspire the doctors in training to step up and own the responsibility of the patient’s wellbeing even when the senior doctors are directly responsible for the patient’s treatment. The senior doctors also admonish the residents to not pass judgment on the patients for their human frailties, shortfalls, and flaws. The book is full of the mental challenges and questions that doctors must confront in fighting on behalf of their patients. Humans, even doctors will make errors. The doctors challenge and inspire residents to be vigilant and meticulous. Still, if an error happens, immediately engage the resources to correct the error. Even bigger questions face the young residents. The question of the mortal inevitability of death is constantly in the front of the mind. While providing perspective, the time of lessons in the residency also percolates the questions about spirituality and belief that each doctor must answer in the quiet of their own life.
What could have made this book better?
Since the good doctor wrote this book three decades after his time as a resident, knowing how his life evolved, how his patients have benefitted by his skills, and how his life has uplifthe red his community would have been welcome additions.
Who would benefit from reading this book?
This book is about the human condition to learn and grow, to face unknown landscapes, and find the right solutions under the pressure of time to save lives. It’s about persistence and perseverance and how the doctors’ training prepared them to serve their patients. The lessons of feeling undeserving, less prepared, and not up to the calling of the work are common to all who break their own barriers and rise to full potential. This book is rich learning material and territory for all.
How this book affected me
I am grateful and inspired by the stories and lessons of the book. The author’s stories of personal drive and ambition to rise above the challenges that make solid doctors in America are informative and inspirational. Some of the many learning points are:
(1) It is the residency that casts the softened clay of medical education rigor into the expert, poised, problem-solving, innovative, and never-give-up attitude of the doctors who fight death on behalf of their patients against all odds and only win sometimes, but keep going undeterred anyway.
(2) Leaders should provide such rigorous learning opportunities for their employees. Teachers should expect excellence, and parents should map children’s capacity and talent to reach their potential.
(3) Like doctors who don’t judge the human failings, frailties, and faults when they treat their patients and nurture them back to health, all of us should learn to do what’s right and not judge others when it comes to performing our mission/s.
(4) The doctors don’t give up because life is worth fighting for. We should all find a purpose that is worthy of our lives and feel so deeply engaged that we never give up.
(5) Pieces of the body are cut away to save a life but those lost pieces don’t take away, erase, or remove smiles, positivity, optimistic attitudes, and hope from patients. We can learn to see our losses in a similar way; losses are cutaway deformities that needed to be removed. Now either retrain or use new tools, or change direction, but retain smiles and positivity, and an indomitable spirit.
(6) Sometimes the most beautiful, charming, and full of life people are prematurely snatched by death. It is unfair and wrong. Even in such darkness, the doctors don’t give up after a patient dies. They close the loop with the surviving family to set them on a hopeful course. We can all learn from the dark and unwelcome incidents that interrupted, derailed, or robbed time and attention from our lives. Let the losses not sap the hope and promise for a bright future.
(7) The 5 year residency is mentally taxing and physically challenging path. Doctors make it past this challenge to serve patients and innovate surgical procedures. The magic to innovate and become strong resides in a secret that applies to all. Dedicating ourselves to excel in every step of the journey. If every challenge does not bring joy to solving the problem, the journey will be long and miserable. Embrace every challenge like life depends on it and solve it. This is reality. Enjoy the journey, and every step will be joyous until the final destination, when life’s final curtain comes down.