A phrase I have heard uttered by many medical trainees (including myself) is “I don’t have time to write.” Many of us have histories as amateur essayists and poets with a thirst for literature that we have since abandoned since starting our medical education. The time and emotional demands in medicine seem to preclude us from devoting the time necessary to read and write for pleasure and contemplation instead of to satisfy the needs of billers and insurance companies. But physicians have worked concurrently as authors for centuries.
In the Middle Ages, Maimonides1 was and continues to be one of the leading Jewish philosophers of all time. But he was also a physician, writing about a number of disease and their treatments, as we do today in the peer-reviewed literature. This tradition has continued through the 21st century, with many authors actually remembered more for their writing than for being physicians. John Keats, who lived for a brief 25 years in the 18th century, is remembered for being one of the greatest poets of the English language. But he finished medical school before giving up the practice of medicine to write. Anton Chekhov also died young, but in that time was an accomplished playwright and essayist all while having a prolific career as a doctor2.
Modern physician-authors also include those recognizable for their medical degree (Atul Gawande, Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese, Oliver Sacks)3 in addition to those primarily known for their writing prowess. Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, Congo, and other books was an immunologist. Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns is an Afghan-born American physician2.
There are numerous examples of physician who have become successful authors, but why do doctors make good writers? Some say3 that as physicians, we are uniquely tuned into the stories of our patients, that we have to be good storytellers to understand and navigate the complexity of our patients’ experiences. We are intimately attuned to living and dying since we experience mortality on regular basis. We are also characters in thousands of patients’ stories every year, and we influence these stories as often as we record them. As physicians, we are trained to be detail-oriented and develop acute observation skills which can benefit us in our writing. And writing also benefits us as physicians, as it can teach us about empathetic care and help us understand the humanity of our patients4.
As to the difficulty in balancing the two fields, having a prolific career as a writer is not for every physician. But the 20thcentury American pediatrician and poet, William Carlos Williams, described writing and medicine as “two parts of a whole.”
“As a writer I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my very food and drink, the very thing that made it possible for me to write. Was I not interested in men? There the thing was, right in front of me.”5
Not all of us would like to prioritize writing, but for those of us who do, we have centuries of role models to look to for inspiration. And for me, that makes it even a little less intimidating to start.
References:
- Seeskin, K. (2017). Maimonides. [online] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/maimonides/[Accessed 2 Dec. 2019].
- Banerjee, A. (2014). 10 medically-trained authors whose books all doctors should read. [online] OUPblog. Available at: https://blog.oup.com/2014/12/author-doctor-reading-list/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2019].
- Beck, D. (2016). Cover Story: The Physician-Writer: Good doctors are good storytellers; some make it a second career. [online] American College of Cardiology. Available at: https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2016/06/10/11/12/cover-story [Accessed 2 Dec. 2019].
- Verghese A. The Physician as Storyteller. Ann Intern Med. 2001;135:1012–1017. doi: https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-135-11-200112040-00028
- Wagner LW. William Carlos Williams: Poet-Physician of Rutherford. JAMA. 1968;204(1):15–20. doi:https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1968.03140140017004
Writing for Wellness 