Get into med school in the graphic memoir ‘See One, Do One, Teach One’

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Get into med school in the graphic memoir ‘See One, Do One, Teach One’

NPR · 2 months ago

Physician and illustrator Grace Farris has written and drawn a graphic memoir, "See One, Do One, Teach One," charting her journey through medical school and residency in Boston. The book matters as an entry in the growing "graphic medicine" genre, which uses comics to convey the realities of healthcare training and treatment in a way conventional prose often struggles to capture, offering readers an unusually candid, visual account of what becoming a doctor actually feels like.

The memoir covers the academic grind of memorising over 10,000 new medical terms and mastering anatomy, alongside the emotional toll of student debt, impostor syndrome and poor work-life balance. Farris depicts her uncertainty over choosing a specialism before settling on internal medicine and psychiatry, and uses vivid visual metaphors, such as comparing emergency-room shifts to a tsunami, rendered in a loose, brightly coloured drawing style. A pivotal section describes how becoming a patient herself after childbirth reshaped her outlook on medicine, prompting her, in her own words, to "rethink everything."

  • Doctor Grace Farris publishes graphic memoir on medical training
  • Book blends comics with candid look at med school and residency struggles
  • Becoming a patient after childbirth changed her view of care

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