Medical Education and the Embodied Physician

Between 1965 and 2005, over forty books about medical education were published. This essay uses the stories contained in these accounts to study individuals' perspectives on the emotional experience of becoming a physician. In particular, it examines the ways in which experiences has registered themselves on—and in—the very bodies of these men and women. It examines the authors' uses of metaphor, sensory imagery, and physical descriptions in ways that underscore their own feelings of uncertainty and vulnerability. Finally, it demonstrates how physicians in training must often struggle alone to understand and incorporate their physical and emotional vulnerability into their sense of themselves as physicians.