My English degree focused on narrative writing. I loaded my credit hours with creative and expository writing classes from Reynolds Price, Melissa Lentricchia, Lee Smith, Michael Moon, and Elizabeth Cox. In the field of medicine, effective communication of thoughts and themes is a cherished and somewhat rarefied skill among a peer group of left-brained scientists. While my Biomedical Engineering and premedical courses laid the foundation for my future medical career, it was my coursework in English composition that gave me mentored feedback to refine my narrative voice. This ability to communicate clearly opened doors to leadership positions throughout my career that may not have been offered without it.
Students should avail themselves of as many credit hours as they believe they can handle. I started Duke as a Biomedical Engineer, but switched my second year to English when I craved more humanities than the BME curriculum allowed. To the student who is early in her career, my advice is to taste as many disciplines as you can. Find disparate courses in unrelated departments which pique your interest. Invest yourself fully in that coursework, extract every morsel of knowledge, and then consider how this unrelated but interesting discipline might elevate your chosen career path. For example, if your non-medical interest is sculpture, you might find your future purpose as a psychotherapist healing patients with art therapy, or as a plastic surgeon sculpting perfection from collagen and cartilage. For the most fulfilling career, do not fall in line behind your peer group herd. At every step of your professional development, wander askew now and again to explore a small passion. Then use your boundless imagination to weave that seemingly unrelated interest into your rigid medical field. Do so successfully and you will reap the bounty of a profession well and meaningfully lived.
When I entered medical school 30 years ago, telemedicine as we know it today was not possible, simply because the required internet speeds and monitor resolutions were not available for less than a queen's ransom. But I did not let that deter me from making it happen. During my training, I researched companies developing early telemedicine technology and either stayed abreast of their progress or reached out directly to assist. One of the companies whose products I beta tested and helped refine was quickly purchased by General Electric. A few decades later, telemedicine is now a mature technology with myriad products to connect physicians and patients remotely.
For doctors in training today, your horizon technology is AI. Neither dread nor denounce it, and certainly don't dismiss it, for it will be in heavy use by the time you enter the workforce. Research the companies doing exciting work with AI, who are pushing the technology to its current limits. When it comes to disruptive technology, it is only the rank-and-file who are disrupted or replaced. Be on the other side of the wave, from where the force originates. Be an early adopter who understands both the proficiencies and privations of the platform. If possible, maneuver yourself to be a stakeholder in the development process and have a say in how the technology will be used. AI will not replace doctors who use it proficiently. Think of it as a tool to make your job faster (you can see more patients), easier (you are less fatigued at day's end), or more accurate (your diagnoses and treatments have better outcomes). All three of these endpoints relieve the deficiencies that plague medicine today (increasing utilization against a strained workforce, increasing burnout and moral injury of medical workers, and iatrogenic morbidity or bad patient outcomes as a result of overworked and underappreciated doctors and nurses.) Artificial Intelligence -- implemented intelligently and carefully -- has the promise to improve the lives of both patients and physicians.
Reynolds was a radiant and generous human being. At his best, he was the Angel Gabriel, bestowing owl-wise advice to young adults just beginning to find their feet and in need of a strong foundation from which to flourish. At his worst, he demanded your absolute best and held you to account; a defining feature of proficient mentors throughout history. It was nothing less than he'd demanded himself, when at the age of 51 in the midst of a meteoric literary and teaching career, he was struck paralyzed by a spinal tumor (and subsequent treatment) which left him incapacitated and reliant on the limbs of others. After two years of grim rehabilitation, he emerged from the ashes of his former life to publish 30 additional works and novels in his last 25 years, despite being a "gimp" (his preferred pronoun) and enduring intolerable phantom pain that he managed only with visualization exercises.
In my senior year Reynolds offered me the job as his personal assistant. I did not hesitate to accept his offer, even though it would delay my entrance to medical school. In addition to attending to the daily medical needs of a man who has lost control of his body below the shoulders, I basked in his indefatigable wisdom every day and wrote my own novelas and short stories in the bucolic quietude of his secluded home off Cornwallis road. When my employment with him concluded, he sent me off to medical school with the jocular warning: "Remember this Danny, if you've got to fix pipes but don't have a heart, at least have the decency to be a plumber, and stay the hell away from actual human beings you can hurt." I recall his sage advice on a nearly daily basis and am a better physician because of it.
English Department
