15 Apr “Meet the Pandemic’s Newest Doctors, Who Quickly Became Pros” – The New York Times
“In her new book, ‘Life on the Line,’ the journalist Emma Goldberg focuses on six young doctors during the Covid-19 surge in New York City last spring. There’s Sam, a gay man all too aware of American medicine’s homophobic past; Gabriela, a Hispanic woman raised by a mother who never went to college; Iris, a first-generation Chinese-American woman whose family is skeptical of white doctors; Ben, an amateur bartender fascinated by end-of-life care; Elana, who grew up on Long Island in an observant Jewish family; and Jay, whose father wanted her to marry and start a family instead of going to medical school. (‘That’s not women’s work,’ he explained to her.)
These newly minted doctors represent the vanguard of American medicine. Socially conscious and with a streak of activism, they are committed to serving patients who have been marginalized in what Goldberg calls the “whitewashed, wealth-washed” American medical system. In this spirit, they volunteer, as fourth-year medical students, to graduate early and begin internships at New York City hospitals besieged by the pandemic. They do not think of themselves as heroes, but in their commitment to their profession, even in the face of personal risk, one would be hard-pressed to see them any other way…”
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